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MEDIAEVAL 
STUDIES 


Vili ΧΧΧΙ 
1 969 


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CONTENTS 


ARTICLES 


Simon of Faversham’s Sophisma: 
“Universale est intentio”. 

Taxation of Italians by the French 
Crown (1311-1363) 

Henry IV, the Commons and Tax- 


ation 

Aquinas — Baneaual Permianeace 
and Flux. 

A New Way to God: “Henry af 
Ghent (IT) 


Theory of Composition in Medieval 
Poetry and Geoffrey of Vin- 
sauf’s Poetria Nova 

Imagery in the Knighi’s Tale and tie 
Miller’s Tale : 

Parce Continuis: Some Textual and 
Interpretive Notes 

Repertorium Mertonense 

Fragmentation of Farms and Fields 
in the Chiltern Hills. Thir- 
teenth Century and Later . 

Francesc Eiximenis on Royal Of- 
ficials. A View of Fourteenth 
Century Aragon 

The Life of Guy of Merton by 
Rainald of Merton 

The Sin of Brunetto Latini 

Four Commentaries on the De Con- 
solatione Philosophiae in MS 
Heiligenkreuz 130 : 

Patientia in the B-Text of “Piers 
Plowman” 


Tetsuo YOKOYAMA 
Joun B. HennemMan, Jr. 
ALAN RoGERS 

JoszpH Owens, C.Ss.R. 


Anton C. Precis 


Dovucias KELLY 
CHRISTOPHER DEAN 
BRIAN STOCK 

James A. WEISHEIPL, O.P. 


Davip RopDEN 


Jmt R. WEBSTER 


Marvin L. CoLKER 
RicuHarp Kay 


Nicuotas M. Harine, S.A.C. 


ELIsaABETH M. OrsTEN 


149 


164 


174 


225 


239 


250 


262 


287 


317 


IV CONTENTS 


MEDIAEVALIA 


Caedmon: A Traditional Christian 


Poet. : : ; DonaLp W. Fritz 334 
The Ointment in Chrétien’s Yvain . Rosert G. Coox 338 
The Sound of Laughter in Sir Gawain 

and the Green Knight : Ξ Epwarp ΤΈΟΒΤΥΙΕ Jones 343 


A Provisional Bibliography of Ores- 
me’s Writings: A Supplement- 
ary Note ‘ : 3 : ALBERT Ὁ. Μετ 346 


Simon of Faversham’s Sophisma: 
“Universale Est Intentio’’ 


TETSUO YOKOYAMA* 


ROFESSOR Carmelo Ottaviano edited the Quaestiones super libros 
praedicamentorum of Simon of Faversham in 1930.1 A year later 
he also edited Quaestiones III-V of Simon’s Quaestiones libri Porphyrit 
which is contained in the MS C.161.Inf. of the Bibl. Ambrosiana in 
Milan, in an article “Le opere di Simone di Faversham e la sua posi- 
zione nel problema degli universali.”? Father Franz Pelster remarks 
on this edition: 
In der Universalienlehre verwift Simon den extremen Realismus, bietet aber 


durch seine starke Betonung des esse intentionale vielleicht ein Element, 
das zu Aureoli und zum Nominalismus hiniiberfihrt.* 


Ottaviano presented a list of Simon’s works as an elenco completo in 
the introduction to his edition of Simon’s Quaestiones super libros Praedica- 
mentorum. M. Grabmann made many important additions to this list.* 
He indicates Codex Lat. Monacensis 3852 (Memb. misc. in quarto, 
S. XIV et XI, 69 fol.) which contains, besides the works of Siger de 
Courtrai edited by G. Wallerand, a series of Sophismata (Sophisma is, ac- 
cording to Grabmann, “eine Literaturgattung der Artistenfacultat, 
welche den literarischen Niederschlag der Disputationstatigkeit inner- 
halb der Artistenfacultat darstellt und mit der Quodlibetalienliteratur 
der theologischen Fakultat grosse Ahnlichkeit besitzt”). The name 
“Simon Anglicus,” i.e. Simon of Faversham, appears among the authors 
of these Sophismata. 


* This is a posthumous article. Following a sojourn of study and research in Europe, Pro- 
fessor Tetsuo Yokoyama returned to Japan where he died one month later on July 25, 1967. 
With his wife’s consent we are publishing this article which had already been accepted. Some 
necessary revisions and corrections are the work of Rev. E. A. Synan of our Faculty and of the 
Editor. 

1 Le Quaestiones super libros Praedicamentorum di Simon di Faversham dal my. Ambrosiano C. 161, 
Inf., in Memorie della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, ser. 6, vol. 3, fasc. 4 (Rome, 1930). 

2 Archivio di filosofia, 1 (1931), 15-29. 

3 Scholastik, 7 (1932), 451 ff. 

4 Die Aristoteleskommentare des Simon von Faversham, handschriftliche Mitteilungen, in Sitzungs- 
beriche der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Munich, 1933). 


2 ἘΝ ; T. YOKOYAMA 


His sophisma is found on fol. 48-49" and carries the title Universale est 
intentio which is here edited. On this Sophisma Grabmann remarks:5 
Dieses Sophisma des Simon von Faversham beleuchtet so die erkenntnis- 
psychologische Seite des Universalienproblems und ist eine wichtige Er- 
ganzung zu den Darlegungen dieses Scholastikers in seinen Aristoteleskom- 


mentaren, vor allem in seinem Jsagogekommentar der Mailander Handschrift, 
liber dessen Universalienlehre Ottaviano gehandelt hat.° 


About Simon’s life we have the following data coming from the in- 
vestigations of Powicke, Little, Pelster and Emden.? He must have 
been born about 1240, probably in the little town in Kent, which gave 
him his name. He taught in Oxford around the year 1300 and was 
chancellor of the University between January, 1304 and February, 1306. 
(If so, he must have been a contemporary at Oxford of Duns Scotus and 
Thomas Sutton). In order to defend his right to Reculver in Kent, he 
left England for Avignon and died there, or on his way there, sometime 
between May 24 and July 19, 1306. 

Among his works which are listed by Grabmann the Quaestiones super 
iertium De Anima also have been edited by D. Sharp,® besides these two 
Quaestiones edited by Ottaviano. 

In this edition the following critical signs have been employed: 
< > = editor’s addition; [ ] = editor’s deletion. 


5 Cf. Catalogus Codicum latinorum Bibliothecae Regiae Monacensis, Tomi 1, Pars Il (Munich, 1894), 

ὁ Grabmann, of. cit., 13. 

ΤῈ. M. Powicke, “Master Simon of Faversham,” Mélanges d’histoire du moyen age offerts ἃ 
M. Ferdinand Lot (Paris, 1925), 649 ff.; A. G. Little and F. Pelster, Oxford Theology and Theolo- 
gians (Oxford, 1934), 262 ff. 

8 Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen dge, 9 (1934), 307-368. 


SIMON OF FAVERSHAM’S SOPHISMA 8 


TEXT 


<U>NIVERSALE EST INTENTIO. Circa istud sophisma tria quaerebantur circa 
ipsum universale. Primum est: quid sit causa activa ipsius universalitatis, utrum, 
videlicet, intellectus agens agat universalitatem in rebus. Secundum de causa 
eius materiali: utrum, videlicet, actu universale sit in intellectu vel in re extra. 
Tertium est de causa eius formali, scilicet: utrum universale, quantum ad id quod 
est, sit substantia vel accidens. 


<I De intellectu agente> 


De primo arguitur quod intellectus agens non agat universalitatem in rebus.t 

<1> Quoniam actu universale est actu intellectum; sed res per operationem 
intellectus agentis non sunt actu intellectae, sed per receptionem intellectus possi- 
bilis; ergo, nec res sunt actu universales per intellectum agentem. 

<2~> Item: universale est unum in multis; sed res per intellectum agentem 
non est una in multis ut abstracta a multis; ergo, nec per eum est universalis. 

Oppositum patet per Aristotelem secundo de Anima et Commentatorem ibidem,? 
qui dicit quod intellectus agens agit universalitatem in rebus. 

Dicebatur ad problema, quod intellectus agens agit universalitatem in rebus, 
quoniam intellectus agens comparatur ad ipsa intelligibilia sicut lumen ad colores; 
sed lumen facit colores, qui sunt potentia visibiles, esse actu visibiles; ideo, similiter, 
intellectus agens facit ea quae sunt potentia intelligibilia actu intellecta. Facit 
autem intellectum actu, in quantum cognitionem agit in intellectum possibilem, 
et® quia universale in actu non est aliud quam cognitio rei, quae est in ipso intel- 
lectus, ideo dicendum est quod intellectus agens agit universale. 

<3> Contra hoc arguebatur primo quod res materiales de se sunt actu in- 
telligibiles, quia intellectus non est maioris virtutis in intelligendo quam sit primum 
agens in agendo; sed primum agens non potest agere substantiam materialem ali- 
quam sine determinata quantitate, hoc implicaret enim contradictionem; ergo, 
intellectus non potest intelligere substantiam materialem sine determinatis acci- 
dentibus. Res igitur sub determinatis accidentibus sunt de se intelligibiles, et per 
consequens non est necessarium ponere intellectum agentem ad hoc quod potentia 
intelligibilia fiant intellecta. 

<4> Item, arguitur quod intellectus agens non agat cognitionem rei in in- 
tellectum possibilem, quoniam si ageret sic, hoc non esset nisi abstrahendo; sed 
probatio quod intellectus agens non abstrahit, quia omne <actu abstractum est> 
actu intellectum; ergo, omne actu abstrahens* est actu intellectus; sed intellectus 
agens non intelligit; ergo, nec abstrahit. 

<5> Item, arguitur quod intellectus agens non recte comparatur® lumini. 
Quia lumen non dat ipsis coloribus formam et quidditatem per quam possit movere 


1 Cf <Ap arcuMENTA>, below, ἢ. 44. 

2 Cap. 5, 417b21 seq.; Averroes, Sum. IV, cap. 1, com. 60, Aristotelis Opera cum Averrois com- 
mentariis (Venice, 1562-1574), Sup. 11, f. 80E seq. 

3 et] eo 4 abstrahens] abstrahentem 

5 comparatur] operatur 


4 : T. YOKOYAMA 


visum. Ideo de se sunt visibiles actu, quia color est de se visibilis vel per se, ut 
ostendit Commentator secundo de Anima,® sed intellectus agens dat fantasmatibus 
formam et speciem per quam possunt movere intellectum possibilem, quia per se 
non movent, quia materiale non est activum in inmateriale; ergo, intellectus agens 
non recte’? comparatur lumini. 

<6> Item, arguitur quod universale in actu non est ipsa cognitio rei, quo- 
niam actu universale est actu cognitum; sed quod est actu cognitum non est ipsa 
cognitio, sicut causatum non est ipsa causalitas; ergo, similiter quod est actu uni- 
versale non est actu cognitio rei. 

<7> Item, universale est praedicabile de multis; si ergo cognitio rei non est 
actu praedicabile de pluribus (quia Sortes non est sua cognitio nec Plato et sic 
de aliis), ergo cognitio rei non est actu illud quod est actu universale. 

<8> Item, arguitur quod quidditas, secundum se considerata, sit actu uni- 
versalis, quia obiectum alicuius virtutis actu apprehenditur ab illa virtute; sed. 
quidditas rei secundum se est obiectum intellectus; ergo, quidditas rei est quod 
actu apprehenditur ab intellectu. Secundum quod actu apprehenditur ab intel- 
lectu est actu universale, quia sicut aliquid est actu singulare dum sentitur, sic 
aliquid est actu universale dum intelligitur; ergo, quidditas rei, secundum se 
considerata, est actu universale. 

<9> Item, arguitur sic: Cuius est potentia eius est actus. Si ergo quidditas 
rei, antequam intelligatur, est universalis in potentia; ergo, cum intelligitur, est 
universalis in actu; ergo, universale in actu non est [cognitio rei existens in anima. 

<10> Item, arguitur quod intellectus agens non agat universale, quia si 
intellectus agens agat universale, cum universale non sit per se existens, tunc 
oportet quod subsistat in aliquo alio. Aut ergo est in intellectu possibili, aut in 
intellectu agente, aut in ipsis fantasmatibus. Sed ipsum, cum agit, non statim est 
in intellectu possibili, quia actio intellectus agentis praecedit receptionem intel- 
lectus possibilis. Item, nec est in intellectu agente, quia tunc intellectus agens 
reciperet; quod non est verum. Nec est in fantasmatibus particularibus.? Ergo, 
non est possibile quod intellectus agens agat universale. 

Plura alia argumenta fiunt ad partem istam, sed omnia redeunt in idem cum 
hiis quae dicta sunt. 


«Ἰ De intellectu possibili> 


Deinde respondebatur: Arguitur quod non est aliquid actu universale per in- 
tellectum agentem, sed per intellectum possibilem, quia propria operatio intel- 
lectus agentis est abstrahere solum quidditatem rei a principiis individuantibus. 
Ista autem natura, sic abstracta, est obiectum intellectus possibilis, qui primo 
intelligit istam naturam absolute, deinde comparat ipsam ad supposita a quibus 
abstrahit, et in comparando sic naturam ad supposita causat in ea intentionem 
universalitatis. Et ita, illud in actu non est universale antequam in actu intellectum. 

Contra ista ita arguitur: Si intellectus simul comparat naturam intellectam ad 
supposita, aut ergo comparat eam ad supposita ut unum sunt, aut secundum quod. 
multa sunt. Si dicas quod simul comparat eam ad supposita ut unum sunt, tunc 
non comparat eam ad supposita, quia supposita, secundum quod unum sunt, 


8 Sum. IV, cap. 3, com. 66, of. cit., f. 84B 7 non recte] notabiliter ἢ 
8 particularibus] particularia 


' 


SIMON OF FAVERSHAM’S SOPHISMA 2 45 


non habent rationem suppositi. Si dicatur quod simul eam ad supposita ut multa 
sunt, tunc intellectus simul intelligit ea ad quae comparat. Sequitur quod in- 
tellectus simul per hoc <quod> comparat naturam istam ad supposita non agit 
intentionem universalitatis. 

Item, si intellectus in illa natura quam intelligit, tunc cum intelligit, agat in 
ea intentionem universalitatis, aut ergo in eodem instanti intelligit ilam naturam 
et agit in ea intentionem universalis, aut in (fol. 48τ4- 48:0) alio. Si in eodem in- 
stanti, tunc in eodem intelligit multa simul, scilicet naturam rei et intentionem 
universalitatis quam agit in illa natura. Si in alio instanti, hoc est inconveniens, 
quia tunc intelligit in aliqua re, dum eam non intelligit, agit et intentionem uni- 
versalitatis; quod® non potest esse, quia si ita esset, tunc intentio generis non erit 
<magis> animali quam homini; ergo, intellectus in ista natura, quam intelligit, 
nullo modo agit universalitatis intentionem. 

Item, secundum Commentatorem, septimo Metaphysicae, universalia rerum sunt 
collata a fantasmatibus particularibus ab intellectu considerante et faciente™ ea 
intentionem unam. Cuius ergo est colligere intentionem unam ex multis parti- 
cularibus, eius est agere actu universale; sed intellectus agentis est colligere in- 
tentionem unam ex multis particularibus, hoc autem non contingit, nisi per ab- 
stractionem a multis abstrahat, quod est proprium intellectus agentis; ergo, ipsius 
est agere universale in actu. 

Ad primum, cum dicebatur quod intellectus illam naturam, in qua agit in- 
tentionem universalitatis, comparat simul ad supposita, et secundum quod sunt 
unum et secundum quod sunt multa; quia per hoc quod intellectus comparat illam 
naturam ad supposita, secundum quod sunt unum, attribuit ei[s] universalitatem, 
et per hoc <quod> comparat eam ad supposita, secundum quod sunt multa, 
attribuit ei[s] communitatem cum alio; <cum> alicui rei attribuitur universalitas 
et communitas, iam ipsa est actu universalis. 

Contra hoc arguitur: Si intellectus aliquam naturam simul comparat ad sup- 
posita, secundum quod unum sunt et etiam ut multa, tune intellectus simul intelligit 
aliqua ut unum et non unum. 

Ad hoc dicebatur quod non est inconveniens, si intelligat aliqua ut unum et 
multa, dummodo tamen hoc sit respectu diversorum. Unde intellectus non aliter 
potest intelligere supposita ut unum et multa sed respectu diversorum, ut unum 
respectu illius naturae quae intellecta est, et ut multa in quantum habent <esse> 
in materia extra. 

Contra hoc arguitur: Si intellectus simul apprehendit supposita ut unum et 
multa respectu diversorum, tunc oportet quod intellectus illa diversa simul in- 
telligat. Aut ergo intelligit simul illa diversa ut diversa sunt, aut ut unum. Non 
est dicere quod simul intelligat illa diversa ut unum, quia tunc intellectus res- 
pectu illorum non posset apprehendere supposita ut unum et multa. Nec est 
dicere quod ille intellectus apprehendat illa diversa ut diversa; quia si sic, hoc erit 
per diversas species intelligibiles; sed intellectus non potest siraul formari diversis 
speciebus intelligibilibus secundum idem corpus: secundum idem non potest 
colorari diversis coloribus; ergo, intellectus simul non potest intelligere diversa ut 


9 quod] quia 
10 Cf. XII Metaphys., Sum. I, cap. 1, com. 4, of. cit., Vol. 8, f. 292rD 
11 faciente] sumente 12 Cf. Contra ista ita arguitur, above 


6 : T. YOKOYAMA 


diversa. Quare, respectu diversorum, non simul apprehendit aliqua ut unum 
et multa. 

Secundo arguitur: Intellectus, cum sit simplex et indivisibilis, ad quodcumque 
se dimittat, totaliter se convertit. Cum non possit totaliter se convertere ad diversa, 
oportet quidquid simul apprehendit sit aliquid unum. Nunc autem unum et 
multa non sunt aliquid unum, immo differentiae oppositae dividentes ipsum ens, 
ergo, intellectus simul non apprehendit aliqua ut unum et multa, sive respectu 
eiusdem aut sive respectu diversorum. 

Ad. primum istorum dicebatur quod intellectus simul potest intelligere diversa 
ut diversa, quia omnis virtus ponens differentias inter aliqua duo simul apprehen- 
dit#® utrumque illorum; ut patet de sensitiva, similiter de intellectiva. 

Contra illud arguitur quod, licet intellectus posset simul intelligere differentiam 
inter aliqua duo, tamen non potest simul intelligere unitatem quae est inter aliqua 
et cum hoc differentiam quae est inter duo aliqua; sed si intellectus apprehendat 
supposita ut unum et multa respectu diversorum, tunc continget quod dictum est: 
oportet quod intellectus comparet supposita ad naturam intellectam, in qua sup- 
posita accipiuntur ut unum et idem; quod comparet supposita inter se invicem 
secundum esse quod habent in materia extra (sic enim comparat ut multa sunt); 
ergo, intellectus simul non potest apprehendere supposita ut unum et multa res- 
pectu diversorum. 

Et hoc idem arguitur sic: Sicut dicit Philosophus tertio de Anima, intellectus 
in indivisibili tempore non intelligit longitudinem, nisi per id quod facit longitu- 
dinem esse unam; ergo, intellectus simul non intelligit aliquid, nisi secundum quod. 
est indivisibile unum. Simul ergo non intelligit aliqua ut diversa sunt; ergo, multo 
fortius nec aliqua ut sunt unum et multa. 

Haec fuerunt argumenta de esse et natura universalis. Parum habemus ab Aris- 
totele traditum nisi quod ipse accipit improbando opiniones philosophorum qui 
ponebant universalia esse quasdam naturas per se subsistentes praeter singularia. 
Et ideo, si sic esset universale, tunc in esse suo non dependeret ab anima. Ex quo 
igitur, viri excellentes in philosophia visi sunt esse contrarii in modo accipiendi 
universalia. Ideo melius est nobis de proposito dubitare quam aliquid per certi- 
tudinem asserere, procedendo per modum inquisitionis. 


«ΠῚ Quid sit dicendum ad problema> 


Considerandum est ergo primo quod natura rei secundum se nec est universalis 
nec particularis. Si enim secundum se esset universalis, tunc non posset esse una 
nec plurificata; et sic natura humana non esset tota in Sorte, nec natura equina 
tota in Brunello. Similiter, si secundum se esset particularis, tunc non posset esse 
plures. Cum ergo natura rei sit una in uno et plures* in pluribus, sequitur quod 
natura rei secundum se nec est universalis nec particularis, sed ipsa est particularis 
secundum esse quod habet in materia extra, cui ut sic coniuncta sunt principia 
individuantia, et est universalis secundum esse quod habet in anima. 

Quod autem naturae!® rei secundum esse quod habet in anima solum conveniat 
ratio universalis, patet per Commentatorem tertio de Anima,” qui dicit quod 


13 apprehendit] intelligit 14 Cap. 6, 430b6 seq. 
15 plures] plura 16. naturae] natura 
Sum. I, cap. 3, com. 18, οὐ. cit., £. 161yF 


SIMON OF FAVERSHAM’S SOPHISMA 7 


nullus ‘homo’ habet esse extra animam quoniam, si haberet, non indigeremus 
ponere intellectum agentem. Et alibi, supra eundem tertium, dicit sic: Si univer- 
salia sunt tantum intellecta, non sic entia sed sic intellecta, ac si diceret quod res 
universaliter intelligitur sed non universaliter existit. Ergo natura rei, licet sit 
illud quod est extra animam, quantum autem ad esse suum universale non est 
nisi in anima. Et hoc declaratur sic: De ratione universalis est unitas et commu- 
nitas. Propter quod dicit Philosophus.4® Universale est unum in multis et propter. 
hoc praeter!® multa. Ex eo enim quod est unum in multis sibi debetur commu- 
nitas; quia est praeter multa, sibi inest unitas. Non autem naturae rei secundum 
se [non] inest communitas, quia tunc non posset inveniri in singulari. Nam quid- 
quid (fol. 48"b-48va) est, singulariter erit; nec in eo invenitur communitas aliqua; 
ergo communitas inest sibi ex quodam alio; hoc autem non est nisi ab intellectu. 
Et ideo, quod natura rei sit universalis, hoc habet ab intellectu. 


<IV De intellectu agente et de intellectu possibili> 


Sed tunc restat dubitatio principalis: Utrum, videlicet, intellectus, qui agit 
universale, sit intellectus agens vel possibilis. Ad cuius dissolutionem sciendum 
est quod secundum Avicennam®® agens dicitur quatuor modis: perficiens, dispo- 
nens, adiuvans, consilians. Perficiens dico illud quod ducit formam in comple- 
mentum rei. Disponens vero non inducit formam, sed praeparat et disponit ad 
introductionem formae. Dico ergo quod intellectus agens agit universale tam- 
quam disponens, sed intellectus possibilis agit universale tamquam perficiens; 
ita quod ratio universalitatis dispositive est ab intellectu agente, completive autem 
ab intellectu possibili. Et quia ratio universalitatis est ab intellectu agente, ideo 
dicit Commentator, tertio de Anima,* quod formae apprehensivae imaginatione 
non possunt per se movere intellectum possibilem et trahere ipsum de potentia 
ad actum quoniam, si ita esset, tunc nulla esset differentia inter universale et in- 
dividuum. Et subdit: Necessarium est igitur alium motorem esse, qui facit eas 
actu movere*™ et hoc non est aliud nisi intellectus agens. 

Apparet ergo ex parte intellectus quod, si non esset intellectus agens, non esset 
differentia inter individuum et universale; propter quod intellectus agens saltem 
dispositive agit universalitatem in rebus. Sed per quem modum videtur sic: 
Fantasmata hoc modo se habent ad intellectum sicut colores ad visum, ut dicitur 
tertio de Anima. Et ideo, sicut visus non videt nisi ad praesentiam coloris, sic 
nec intellectus intelligit nisi ad praesentiam fantasmatis. Sed praesentia fantas- 
matis non sufficit. Nam, sicut ad actionem videndi requiritur lumen extrinsecum, 
quod facit colores qui sunt potentia visibiles esse actu visibiles, vel ut verius loqui- 
mur, quod facit medium esse actu lucidum quod possit ad hoc inmutari a colori- 
bus; sic ad actum illuminandi requiritur lumen quoddam extrinsecum per quod 
potentia intelligibilia facit actu intelligibilia. Hoc autem est intellectus agens. 
Et ideo figurative dicit Philosophus in tertio de Anima®* quod intellectus agens est 


18 Cf. Anal. Post. L. II, cap. 18, 100a7-8; Met., L. VII, cap. 13, 1038b9 seq. 
19 praeter] nota 

20 Sufficientia, L. 1, cap. 10, Avicennae Opera (Venice, 1508), f. 19a 

21 Sum. I, cap. 3, com. 18, of. cit., f. 161rC-161vD 

316 movere] moveri 22 Cf. cap. 7, 431a14-15 

23 Cap. 5, 430a15 


8 T. YOKOYAMA 


habitus ut lumen, quia sicut Iumen facit ad comprehensionem colorum, sic in- 
tellectus agens ad comprehensionem intelligibilium. Et sicut®* visus mediante 
lumine exteriori videt corpus coloratum secundum quod coloratum solum, sic 
anima nostra ad praesentiam fantasmatis et intellectus agentis comprehendit 
naturam rei sine omni accidente; ita quod intellectus agens non est nisi quaedam 
virtus particularis in anima nostra, per quam anima distincte potest comprehendere 
praeter esse illud quod non est de ratione sua. Quidditas vero, sic abstracta ab 
omni eo, quod sibi accidit, et maxime a plenariis fantasmatibus individualibus®5 
virtute intellectus agentis, sic <est> in propingua dispositione ad hoc quod sit 
actu universalis. 

Ilo autem modo intellectus agens saltem dispositive agit universalitatem in rebus. 
Sed universale quantum ad rationem eius completivam est ab intellectu possibili, 
et non ab agente, quod patet ex duobus. Primo sic: Nam intellectus agens, cum 
agat abstrahendo, manifestum est quod causa actionis suae est aliqua natura ab- 
stracta, utrumsit naturae aut rei, secundum hoc solum quod abstracta, non est actu 
universalis quia ipsa, ut abstracta est, non habet respectum ad supposita, ut postea 
magis videbitur. Et ideo natura rei, inquantum ad ipsam terminatur absolute 
actio intellectus agentis, non est actu et completive universalis. 

Hoc similiter declaratur ex alio: In universali secundum actum est duo conside- 
rare, scilicet, intentionem universalitatis et naturam subiectam intentioni. Intentio 
autem universalitatis, cum non sit praesentia fantasmatum, causatur ex aliqua pro- 
prietate reali. Et ideo contingit quod anima diversas intentiones logicales attribuit 
diversis rebus secundum diversas proprietates rerum. Ex quo arguitur sic: Cuius 
non est considerare proprietates rerum, eius non est agere completivam rationem 
universalis; sed intellectus agentis non est considerare res nec proprietates rerum, 
quia intellectus agens non cognoscit. Propter quod dicit Commentator?® quod. 
intellectus agens non est intellectus qui?’ cognoscat sed qui®® efficit ut possit in- 
telligere. Et ideo intellectus agentis non est agere completam rationem universalis. 

Apparet, igitur, ex praedictis quod [non] natura rei, ex solo quod abstracta est, 
non est actu universalis, sed ipsa [est] actio et dat formis imaginatis virtutem per 
quam possunt agere intellectum possibilem, <et> dat ipsi virtutem per quam 
possit recipere; et hic, quid recipere, nihil aliud est quam transferre. Et ad hoc 
respiciens Commentator, tertio de Anima*®, dicit quod abstrahere nihil aliud est 
quam intentiones imaginatas*® facere in actu, quae prius erant in potentia, et 
intelligere* nihil aliud est quam recipere has intentiones. Si, ergo, abstrahere 
est propria operatio intellectus agentis, manifestum est quod operatione® intellec- 
tus agentis aliquid fit actu intelligibile, sed nondum fit actu universale, et totum 
hoc patet ex praedictis. 

Restat, ergo, quod universale, quantum ad rationem eius completivam, fiat 
ab intellectu principali, quod patet sic: De ratione universalis completiva sunt 
duo, scilicet: unitas et universalitas. Nunc autem natura rei nec est una nec com- 
munis, nisi per solam operationem intellectus et eius considerationem. Ipsa enim 


24 sicut] sic 

35. individualibus + ipsa de licet et Avicenna 9 Probably some words are missing here. 
36 Cf. De Anima, L. III, Sum. I, cap. 3, com. 19, op. cit., 160vE ff. 

27 qui] quod 28 qui] quod 

29 Sum. I, cap. 3, com .18, of. cit., f. 161vE 80 imaginatas] imaginantis 

31 intelligere] intellectus 32 operatione] operationi 


SIMON OF FAVERSHAM’S SOPHISMA 9 


est una inquantum consideratur abstracta, et est communis in quantum conside- 
ratur ut dicitur de pluribus, non diminuta in illis quantum est de se; (fol. 48va- 
48b) unde, eadem natura, quae abstractive intelligendo secundum esse est in 
particularibus. Et ideo intellectus illam naturam accipit, ut est de pluribus prae- 
dicabilis praedicatione dicente: Hoc est hoc. Ergo natura rei non est actu univer- 
salis, nisi cum est actu abstracta et actu considerata ab intellectu. 

Et hoc patet per Themestium, supra tertium de Anima, ubi dicit quod univer- 
salia sunt conceptus quidam quos anima in seipsa thesaurizat et colligit. Ergo ratio 
universalis non attribuitur alicui rei, nisi cum est actu intellecta. Sed addendum 
quod <ad hoc quod> natura rei fit actu universalis non sufficit quod fit actu in- 
tellecta; sed cum natura rei apprehenditur ab intellectu per comparationem ad 
supposita, et intellectus considerat quod supposita in illa natura rei conveniant, 
ita quod quantum ad naturam illam unum suppositum ab alio non differt; tunc 
intellectus agens agit in ea intentionem universalitatis et accipit ipsam ut aliquid 
praedicabile de pluribus; quod si intellectus apprehendit ipsam de pluribus diffe- 
rentibus specie solum praedicabilem, attribuit sibi intentionem generis; si autem 
de pluribus differentibus numero solum praedicabilem, attribuit ei intentionem 
speciei, et sic de aliis. 

Quod autem talis comparatio naturae ad supposita ut sunt similia et convenien- 
tia in natura illa requiratur ad completam rationem illius, patet per Boethium 
supra Praedicamenta,®* ubi dicit quod ‘genus et species non’ est ‘uno singulari’ 
intellecto ‘sed ex omnibus singularibus mentis’ concepta ‘ratione’. Hoc idem vult 
Lincolniensis supra primum Posteriorum,®® ubi dicit quod cum demonstratione tria 
sint: magnitudo, figura et color; ratio, magnitudinem® a colore, colorem a figura, 
et haec omnia dividit a corpore, quousque perveniat®’? ad cognitionem corporis 
absolute. Sed ideo ad hoc non vult ibi universale antequam abstractum fuerit a 
multis et consideratum ab intellectu ut unum et idem in multis repertum. 

Considerandum est etiam de intentione Commentatoris, supra XII Metaphysicae,** 
qui dicit quod ‘universalia apud Aristotelem sunt collecta a particularibus ab 
intellectu, qui concipit inter ea similitudinem et facit eam unam intentionem.’ 

Et Themestius, supra prooemium de Anima, dicit quod genus est conceptus 
quidam sine hypostasi ex tenui similitudine singularium collectus. 

Hoc ergo est quasi communis intentio omnium expositorum quod per com- 
parationem naturae intellectae ad supposita [quod] illa natura actu est universalis. 
Sic ergo patet ex dictis quid requiratur ad completam rationem universalis, scilicet 
quod sit actu abstractum et quod sit actu intellectum et quod sit ad aliud com- 
paratum. 


33 Verbeke, G., Thémistius, Commentaire sur le Traité de Vdme d’Aristote (Louvain-Paris, 1957), 
130, Il. 95-96. 

34 PL 64, 1836 

35 Robert Grosseteste, In posteriorum analeticorum librum, I, cap. 14 (81a38-b9) (Venice, 1514), 
fol. 17r a: “ratio vero ... dividit colorem a magnitudine et figura et corpore et iterum figuram 
et magnitudinem a corpore ... et ita per divisionem et abstractionem perventi in cognitionem 
corporis subiective deferentis magnitudinem et figuram et colorem.” 

36 magnitudinem] magnitudine 3? perveniat] perveniant 

38 Sum. I, cap. 1, com. 4, of. cit.. Vol. VIII, f. 292D 

39 Op. cit., pp. 8-9, 11. 22-23 


10 T. YOKOYAMA 


Sed tunc incidit dubitatio: Cum natura rei sit indivisibilis temporis, <utrum> 
in eodem sit actu abstracta et actu intellecta. : 

Et dicendum est quod sic; quia videmus in naturalibus quod in eodem instanti, 
cum materia est summe disposita ad introductionem alicuius figurae, inducitur 
forma. Aliter*® saltem esset ponere materiam sine formam. Manifestum est enim 
quod, <quando> materia est summe disposita ad aliquam formam, [quod] tunc 
in materia non manet forma contraria. Nunc autem cum natura rei est actu ab- 
stracta, est summe disposita ad hoc quod fit intellecta, et ideo, in eodem indivisi- 
bili tempore, est actu abstracta et actu intellecta. 

Item, videmus in naturalibus quod agens non agit formam per se, nec materiam 
per se, sed agit formam in materia secundum totum aggregatum ex utraque.* 
Nunc autem natura abstracta comparatur sicut forma ad materiam. Et ideo in- 
tellectus agens simul agit aggregatum quoddam ex illa natura et intellectu possibili, 
ita quod simul virtute intellectus agentis illa natura abstrahitur et intelligitur ab 
intellectu possibili. Et intellectus agens in abstrahendo a materia naturam simul 
tempore, simul agit eam in intellectu possibili. Sic ergo manifestum est ex dictis 
quod natura rei simul et actu abstracta et actu intellecta. 

Sed ulterius est utrum prius actu intellecta quam sit comparata ad supposita. 

Dico quod sic. Cuius declaratio est haec: Intellectus simul non potest intelligere 
aliqua quorum [ut] non sit una ratio intelligendi; sed eius quod. est absolutum, 
et etiam eius quod est comparatum, non est una ratio intelligendi. Nam ‘absolu- 
tum’ et ‘comparatum’ sunt primae differentiae distinguentes substantiam ab acci- 
dente, et istorum non est aliqua ratio una, ut est alibi declaratum. Oportet, ergo, 
quod intellectus prius intelligat eam <absolute quam> comparative ad aliud, 
sic etiam in re prius absolutum quam comparatum, et hoc manifeste in nobis 
experimur. Non enim statim cum intelligimus naturam hominis, apprehendimus 
eam ut praedicabilem de pluribus est. Nec mirum, quia cum absolute apprehen- 
dimus naturam hominis, non apprehendimus aliquod accidens eius; esse autem 
praedicabile de pluribus est accidens naturae humanae; ideo, etc. 

Sed ulterius, cum natura rei prius sit actu intellecta quam ad aliud comparata, 
aliquis dubitaret utrum simul cum est actu comparata ad supposita sit actu uni- 
versalis. 

Et dico: Simul cum intellectus naturam rei comparat ad supposita, hoc modo 
quod eam apprehendit ut communem pluribus, attribuit sibi intentionem univer- 
salitatis. Sed ante istam comparationem praeexigitur alia comparatio, quae est 
suppositorum inter se. Nam intellectus primo considerat quomodo supposita ad 
se invicem conveniunt et quomodo inter se differunt. Et tunc intellectus com- 
parans naturam aliquam ad supposita, quantum ad hoc quod conveniunt, agit 
in ea intentionem universalis; ita quod, simul cum natura rei comparatur ad 
supposita secundum quod sunt aliquid unum, ipsa sit actu universalis; et sibi 
attribuitur ratio praedicandi de pluribus. 


<V De universali et de re extra animam> 


Sed tunc forte dubitaret aliquis. Si enim universale secundum quod hoc sit 
in intellectu et singulare sit extra, nihil autem quod separatum est ab alio praedi- 
catur in quid de eo et essentialiter; ideo, non videtur tunc quod universalia possint 
praedicari de singularibus. 


40 Aliter] Ita 41 utraque] utroque 


SIMON OF FAVERSHAM’S. SOPHISMA 11 


Ad hoc dicendum quod universale includit duo: scilicet, intentionem universali- 
tatis et naturam subiectam intentioni. Intentio universalitatis est (fol. 48vb-49ra) 
conceptus quidam in anima, [in] attributus ipsis rebus. Huiusmodi autem con- 
ceptus dicitur esse genus vel species et huiusmodi, quae non habent esse nisi per 
animam. Unde in ea sunt sicut in causa efficiente, sed in re intellecta, inquantum 
intellecta, est sicut in subiecto. Istae autem intentiones non praedicantur de ipsis 
singularibus, (quoniam* non dicimus quod Sortes sit species vel universale), sed 
praedicantur de natura rei, ut intellecta est. Unde dicimus quod homo est species, 
animal est genus. 


<VI De universali: substantia vel accidens> 


Ulterius, quia eadem est natura secundum substantiam quae est in intellectu 
per suam speciem et quae est in singularibus per suam substantiam, ideo intellec- 
tus illam naturam, quam intelligit, accipit ut praedicabilem de singularibus in 
quid, ita tamen, quod illa natura non praedicatur essentialiter in quid de singulari- 
bus sub ea ratione qua est intellecta. Nam ista praedicatio est accidentalis: ‘Sortes 
est homo intellectus.? Sub ea ratione absolute considerata praedicatur etiam 
accidens. Et sic natura, quae praedicatur, est in singularibus sicut in subiecto, in 
intellectu, autem, sicut in termino, et cum praedicatur de singularibus habet or- 
dinem ad ipsum intellectum; et pro tanto dicuntur res, quae praedicantur de 
pluribus, esse in intellectu. Sed sunt in re extra sicut in subiecto. Unde verum 
est dicere quod numquam natura rei praedicaretur de pluribus, nisi esset actu in- 
tellecta; quia, cum praedicari est actus rationis, nihilominus tamen, sub illa ratione 
qua est intellecta, <non> praedicatur de pluribus, sed sub illa ratione qua est 
natura particularis et substantia. 

Sic, ergo, ex brevibus apparet quomodo differentia est, nam universale, quantum 
ad intentionem universalem, in anima est sicut in subiecto, et illo modo non est 
in singularibus, neque praedicatur de ipsis. Universale autem, quantum ad rem 
subiectam intentioni universalitatis, in re est sicut in subiecto, et de singularibus 
praedicetur in quid. Verum est <quod>, cum ipsa praedicatur de singularibus, 
est intellecta; sed non praedicatur sub ea ratione qua intellecta. Ideo natura rei, 
ut de se, nec est determinata ad esse in anima, nec ad esse extra animam de quo 
praedicatur. 

Ex praedictis, quinque manifesta sunt in generibus: Primum est quod. universale 
dispositive est ab intellectu agente. Secundum est quod est completive ab intellectu 
possibili, Tertium est quod, quamvis res sit actu intellecta, tamen non est actu 
universalis antequam ad suppposita comparetur. Quartum* est quod natura rei 
est prius intellecta quam sit ad supposita comparata. Quintum est quod simul 
ad supposita comparata ipsa sit universalis. Ad habendum igitur naturam com- 
pletam universalis requiritur quod natura rei sit actu abstracta, actu intellecta, 
actu comparata ad supposita, hoc modo quod secundum se sit una in illis, et se- 
cundum iudicium animae, tamen, plurificata cum secundum se extra non. Et sic 
patet quid sit dicendum ad problema. 


#2 quoniam] qui 43 Quartum] Quarta 


12 T. YOKOYAMA 


<VII Responsa ad argumenta principalia>“ 


Nunc, ad rationes in opposito: quando dicitur actu universale est actu in intel- 
lectu, dico quod verum est. Et cum dicitur: res per operationem intellectus agentis 
non sunt actu intellectae, concedo quod per solam operationem intellectus agentis 
non sunt actu intellectae et similiter non sunt actu universales. 

Ap aLrup concedo maiorem. Ad minorem, cum dicitur quod res non est in 
multis per intellectum agentem, ideo abstracta a multis; dico quod statim quando 
res est abstracta, ipsa est una in multis quantum est de se. Ideo concedo quod per 
intellectum agentem res est abstracta a multis et una in multis, sed tamen non 
est communis ad multa antequam sit actu intellecta et actu comparata ad sup- 
posita, et quod‘ hoc fit per intellectum possibilem. Et ideo concedo conclusionem, 
scilicet quod res per intellectum agentem non est actu universalis et completive. 

AD TERTIAM RATIONEM, cum dicitur intellectus non est maioris virtutis in intelli- 
gendo quam primum agens in agendo, propter dissolutionem rationis advertendum 
est quod potentia primi agentis non se extendit ad aliquid quod implicat contra- 
dictoria. Quia esse, quod implicat contradictoria, est prohibitum esse, et de eius 
ratione est non esse. Ad nihil autem tale, quod de sua ratione est prohibitum esse, 
se extendit virtus alicuius agentis; et propter hoc potentia primi agentis non se 
extendit ad hoc quod est facere hominem esse hominem et non hominem simul. 
Ista tamen impotentialitas non accidit a parte agentis primi, quia, scilicet, pri- 
mum agens non possit agere, sed quia illud non potest agi. 

Dico ergo ad minorem quod intellectus non est maioris** virtutis in intelligendo 
quam sit primum agens in agendo, et hoc si consideremus potentiam primi agentis 
absolutam. Si tamen consideremus ad hoc quod multa sunt impossibilia quae possunt 
intelligi et tamen ipsa sunt prohibita esse de sua ratione, sic dico quod. intellectus 
multa potest intelligere quae non potest primum agens agere. Sed ista impotentia 
oportet [non] attendi non ex parte agentis primi, sed ex parte eius quod non potest 
fieri. Sufficit ergo dicere ad maiorem quod intellectus non sit maioris virtutis in 
intelligendo aliquid quam sit primum agens in agendo, nisi ipsum sit tale quod 
implicet contradictionem; et cum dicitur in minori quod primum agens non potest 
agere substantiam materialem sine determinata quantitate, quia hoc implicat 
contradictionem; et ideo concedo quod intellectus intelligendo non potest hoc 
agere quod substantia materialis in re existat sine determinata quantitate; nihilo- 
minus intellectus potest seorsum considere substantiam materialem non conside- 
rando quantitatem sub qua existit. 

AD ALIAM, cum arguitur quod intellectus agens non abstrahit, dicendum quod 
sic: Cum enim dicitur quod esse actu abstractum est esse actu intellectum, concedo. 
Et cum concluditur: Ergo et esse actu abstrahens est actu intellectus, dico quod 
necesse est ponere secundum substantiam <idem> esse quod abstrahit et intelli- 
git; sed secundum aliam virtutem abstrahit et intelligit. Unde intellectus agens 
abstrahit secundum quod agens, intelligit autem secundum quod intellectus. Sicut 
enim intellectus agens et intellectus separabilia sunt secundum virtutem,*’ ita et 
secundum operationem; ita quod huic toti aggregato quod est intellectus agens de- 


44 Cf. <Argumenta de primo>, above, n. 1 to text 
45 quod] quid 48 maioris] minoris 
41 virtutem] substantiam 


SIMON OF FAVERSHAM’S SOPHISMA 13 


bentur simul ἰδίας (fol. 49'a-49'b) duae operationes scilicet intelligere et abstrahere, 
abstrahere inquantum agens, intelligere autem <in>quantum intellectus; et ita 
quod anima per hoc quod est possibilis recipit et per hoc quod est intellectus in- 
telligit. 

Et hoc est quod Commentaror dicit supra tertium de Anima.*8 Haec sunt verba 
sua: ‘Necesse est’ ut ‘hacc tres differentiae sint in anima. Oportet enim quod in 
ea sit intellectus, qui est intellectus per hoc quod in eo recipitur omne ’; unde 
idem est intellectus possibilis, et intellectus qui est ‘intellectus*® secundum quod 
ipsum facit intelligere omne’ et iste est intellectus agens, et intellectus qui est in- 
tellectus ‘secundum quod intelligit omne.’ 

Dicatur ad rationem sic: Omne actu abstrahens est actu intellectus. Dico quod 
verum est non secundum idem. Et cum dicitur in minori: Intellectus agens non 
intelligit, dico quod immo, sicut dictum est. Unde non sequitur conclusio intenta, 
scilicet quod intellectus agens non abstrahit. Sed illud sequitur quod intellectus 
agens non secundum idem abstrahit et intelligit, nam abstrahit in eo quod agens, 
intelligit autem in eo quod intellectus. 

AD guinTaM®® cum arguitur quod intellectus non recte comparatur lumini, quia 
lumen non dat corporibus virtutem etc.; dicendum quod pro tanto intellectus agens 
comparatur lumini, quia sicut visus non videt nisi medio existente luminato, sic 
intellectus noster non intelligit nisi cum natura aliqua sit actu abstracta lumine 
intellectus agentis. Quantum ad illud quod tangitur in ratione supradicta intel- 
lectus agens non recte comparatur®! lumini. ἢ 

AD SEXTAM ET AD SEPTIMAM, quae probabant simul quod universale in actu non 
est ipsa cognitio rei, concedo. Hoc enim proprie loquendo est actu universale 
quod. est in intellectu et actu comparatum ad suppositum tamquam praedicabile 
de ipso. Ideo ipsa rei cognitio non est actu universale, nisi extendendo nomen 
universalis. 

AD ocTavaM, quae probat quod quidditas rei secundum se considerata est actu 
universale, respondendum est: Cum arguitur: ‘Quod actu intelligitur est actu 
universale,’ dico quod non est verum nisi ipsis addatur quia quod actu intelligitur 
et actu habet supposita est actu universale. Et tu dicis: Aliquid est actu singu- 
lare dum sentitur, ergo a simili aliquid est universale dum intelligitur. Dico quod 
non est simile. Sensus enim, licet recipiat speciem rei singularis et absque materia, 
non tamen recipit absque conditionibus materiae. Species enim rei singularis 
percipitur in sensu sub esse hic et nunc, et quia res efficitur singulare per principia 
individuantia quae sunt hic et nunc: 1453 quod recipitur in sensu, in singularibus est. 
Et quod recipitur in intellectu est quidditas rei absolutae. Hoc enim per se est 
obiectum intellectus, ut dicitur tertio de Anima;** ubi dicit Philosophus quod sensus 
discernit carnem, intellectus autem esse carnis et quidditatem. Quidditas ergo rei 
secundum se considerata est obiectum intellectus. Sed quidditas, cum sic conside- 
rata, non est actu universalis. Ideo plus requiritur, ut ostensum est. Et ideo, licet 
illud quod sentitur sit singulare, tamen illud quod intelligitur non est universale 
necessario, sed tantum* in potentia. 


48 Cf. Sum. I, cap. 3, com. 18, of. cit., f. 161 AB 49 intellectus] intelligere 
50 quintam] quartam 51 comparatur] operatur 
52 14] ad 53 Cap. 4, 429b14-16 


54 sed tantum] et 


14 T. YOKOYAMA 


RaTIONEM NONAM concedo, quia probat quod natura rei sit actu universalis per 


operationem ‘intellectus. 

AD DeEcIMaAM dico quod patet solutio per praedicta, quia probat quod intellectus 
agens non agit universale completive sed dispositive; et hoc est concessum in 
praemissis. 

Haec dicta sunt dubitative per modum inquisitionis. 

Explicit sophisma determinatum a magistro Simone, Anglico. 


Kansai University, Osaka. 


Taxation of Italians by the French Crown 
(1311-1363)* 


JOHN B. HENNEMAN, Jr. 


Τ᾿ is well-known that businessmen from Italy played a predominant 

role in international trade and banking during the Middle Ages. 
Largely made possible by superior business techniques,! this position of 
leadership was achieved in the face of difficult communications and wide- 
spread objections to usury. Another obstacle was the perpetual insecurity 
faced by prosperous aliens in foreign lands. Even when supposedly pro- 
tected by treaties or privileges, Italians were vulnerable to capricious 
extortion and mistreatment, particularly in countries such as France, 
where the outlook of government was more “feudal” and less “capital- 
istic” than in the towns of Italy. 


* The following abbreviations will be used throughout in the notes: 


AN: Archives Nationales, Paris 

BN: Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris 

AD: Archives Départementales 

AM: Archives Municipales Communales 

NAF: Nouvelles Acquisitions Frangaises 

BEC: Bibliothéque de I’ Ecole des Charies 

Ord: Ordonnances des rays de France de la troisiéme race, recueillies par ordre chronologique (various 
editors), 21 vols. (Paris, 1723-1849) 

HL: C. Devic and J. Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc avec des notes et les pieces justi- 


ficatives, new edition, ed. A. Molinier δὲ al., 16 vols. (Toulouse, 1872-1904) 

FT Ch. IV: J. Viard (ed.), Les journaux du trésor de Charles IV le Bel (Paris, 1917) 

FT Ph. VI: J. Viard (ed.), Les journaux du trésor de Philippe VI de Valois suivis de Vordinarium the- 
sauri de 1338-1339 (Paris, 1899) 

Mignon: C. V. Langlois (ed.), Inventaire d’anciens comptes royaux dressé par Robert Mignon 
(Paris, 1899). 

The author is grateful to Professor E. M. Beame and Prof. and Mrs. Raymond de Roover 
who read an early draft of this article and made many valuable criticisms and suggestions. In 
particular I wish to thank Prof. Elizabeth Brown for suggesting the proper interpretation of 
several difficult texts. None of these persons, of course, is in any way responsible for such errors 
and ambiguities as may remain. 

1 R. S. Lopez, “Italian Leadership in the Mediaeval Business World,” Journal of Economic 
History, 8 (1948), 63-68; R. de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494 (Norton 
Library edition, New York, 1966), 1-2, hereafter cited as Rise and Decline. 


16 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


During the first two-thirds of the fourteenth century, two develop- 
ments profoundly affected the position of Italian merchants and bankers 
in France. First, the long period of general prosperity was gradually 
succeeded by a depression which inevitably involved the many business 
interests of the Italians.2 Secondly, the French crown found itself engaged 
in costly military ventures without a tax system capable of financing 
protracted wars. As the royal government struggled to develop adequate 
financial resources it was forced to adopt various unpopular fiscal ex- 
pedients. Quite naturally the crown began to exploit foreign business- 
men, whose wealth might be tapped with a minimum of political risk. 
With the period characterized by both rising government expenses and 
general economic difficulty, French fiscal policy towards the Italians is 
of particular interest. It illustrates some methods of royal financing and 
the impact of these methods on Europe’s leading businessmen. 

In general we may distinguish three main types of tax paid by Italians 
in fourteenth century France, although they were described by a variety 
of terms. The first of these may be classified as customs duties, for it 
was under Philip IV (1285-1314) that the royal customs service developed. 
The customs were normally export taxes taking the form of a license to 
carry out of the kingdom certain products whose export had earlier been 
prohibited. These were not, strictly speaking, taxes on Italians, but 
because the latter largely controlled the export trade they paid the great 
bulk of these duties and also served frequently as tax farmers and customs 
collectors. Italians paid other taxes purely because of their nationality, 
more or less regular payments which permitted them to reside in the 
kingdom and conduct their business under royal protection. The third, 
least regular, and largest typeof levy to which they were subject was 
the occasional extortion by the crown from those engaged in money- 
lending. Generally based upon the enforcement of the usury laws, this 
sort of tax could be an outright confiscation of property or credits or 
might be disguised by such names as “fine”, “loan”, or “gift”. 

These taxes based on the usury laws were different from the others 
because of the serious moral stigma attached to lending money at interest. 
It is not possible here to review the extensive literature on usury in the 
Middle Ages. Suffice it to say, the question is complex. Ecclesiastical 
and secular authorities sometimes agreed and sometimes did not. There 


2 Μ. Postan and E. E. Rich (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2 (Cambridge, 
1952), 191 ff. (M. Postan) and 338 ff. (R. 5. Lopez); E. Perroy, “Les crises au xiv® siécle,” 
Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations, 4 (1949), 167-182; R. 8. Lopez and H. A. Miskimin, 
“The Economic Depression of the Renaissance,” Economic History Review, 14 (1961-62), 408-425. 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 17 


were different criteria for Christian and Jew, native and foreigner, trans- 
actions involving great risk and those which did not. Above all there 
was a practical distinction between overt and concealed interest which 
tended to work to the advantage of large companies engaged in inter- 
national trade as well as money-lending.? In France, where usury re- 
mained illegal for centuries, we find a gradual relaxation in the definition 
of the term. St. Louis had defined usury as “whatever exceeds the prin- 
cipal”, while Philip IV and his successors began to tolerate interest 
rates of 15-20% after 1311, subject to various conditions.*° However usury 
may have been defined at any given time, enforcement of the laws never 
was continuous because the crown lacked adequate administrative ma- 
chinery and some important interests perpetually needed easy credit. 
This fact made the usury prohibition a useful fiscal device, for periodic 
enforcement could yield the king large fines. The perpetual existence 
of a lucrative business conducted outside the law constituted a curious 
form of “capital” for the monarchy, a resource on which it could fall 
back upon when circumstances rendered regular revenues insufficient. 

Although exactions based on usury were especially irregular, all taxes 
paid by Italians were subject to capricious changes. As exporters, as 
aliens, and as money-lenders, the Italians were vulnerable whenever the 
French government was forced to seek a fiscal expedient. 


ἧς 
* OK 


3 For a good recent short summary of the usury problem, see De Roover, Rise and Decline, 
10-14, and notes. His earlier work, Money, Banking and Credit in Mediaeval Bruges (Cambridge, 
Mass., 1948), is essential for understanding the Italians as money-lenders throughout Europe. 
In making a careful distinction among thice categories of mediaeval bankers, de Roover applies 
the term “lombard” to a sort of pawnbroker who extended short-term loans at interest. These 
persons were manifestly usurers and like the Jews their position was precarious (ibzd., 99-100). 
The large merchant banking houses, concealing interest more effectively, enjoyed a more privi- 
leged position. De Roover also points out (ibid., 346) that “Lombard” might also mean any 
Italian merchant, and he urges a distinction between “lombard” and “Lombard.” The do- 
cuments used in this article often employ rather general expression like “Italians and Lombard 
usurers,” and do not permit so clear a distinction. The French crown did not restrict itself 
to pawnbrokers when extorting money from “usurers.” Late in 1330, for instance, an Italian 
compagnia based in Pistoia was among those victimized. See R. 5. Lopez and I. W. Raymond 
(eds.), Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World (New York, 1955), 194, hereafter cited as 
Medieval Trade. In these pages, therefore, the term “Lombard” will be used to mean any Italian 
whose business included the lending of money. 

4 Ord. 1, 53-54 (1230): Usuras autem intelligimus quidquid ist ultra sortem. The editor notes that 
another manuscript version of this text has extra instead of ultra. 

5 Ord., 1, 484-487, cited below, note 46. 


18 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


The customs duties in fourteenth century France were of three main 
types. The oldest, a system of licenses to export wool, later known as 
haut passage, has been studied elsewhere.* In force since the early days 
of Philip IV’s reign, it began to decline in value after 1320, as Italian 
merchants made increasing use of the direct sea-route in shipping English 
wool to the Mediteranean and thus by-passed French territory.” Still 
worth 8000 livres parisis annually in 1331, the haut passage had an estimated 
value of only 2000 pounds in 1344, despite administrative reforms in 
1342 which aimed at making the levy more efficient.® 

The late Capetian kings restricted export of other products besides 
wool, and the Ports and Passages administration acquired growing effi- 
ciency under Pierre de Chalon.® The improved administrative machinery 
facilitated the introduction of a new general export tax under Charles IV 
at the end of 1324, following a stringent restriction of exports the summer 
before. Known as the droit de reve, it was an ad valorem duty of four deniers 
per pound (1 2/3%) on most products, with a special rate schedule on 
certain commodities like. wine. The ordinance establishing this levy 
affected all exporters, not merely Italians, and doubtless they found it 
preferable to the strict export prohibition enacted earlier29 What is 


8 A. Vuitry, Etudes sur le régime financier de la France avant la Révolution de 1 789, nouv. sér., 1 
(Paris, 1878), 120-135, hereafter cited as Régime financier; J. R. Strayer and C. H. Taylor, Studies 
in Early French Taxation (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 14-17 (hereafter cited as French Taxation) ; 
J. Viard, editor’s introdution to FT’ Ch. IV; J. L. Moreau de Beaumont, Mémoire concernant les 
impositions et droits en Europe, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1787-89), 3, 353, hereafter cited as Mémoire; and 
especially G. Bigwood, “La politique de la laine en France sous les régnes de Philippe le Bel 
et de ses fils,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 15 (1935), 79-102, 429-457; 16 (1936), 95-118, 
hereafter cited as “Politique de la laine.” Bigwood’s tables for the 1320’s (ibid., 450-451) show 
that only 1% of the tax in those years was paid by non-Italians, striking evidence of the degree 
to which this duty amounted in practice to a tax on Italians. 

7 Bigwood, “Politique de la laine,” 452. There are over seventy entries in JT Ch. IV between 
no. 250 and no. 10183 indicating payment of this tax. The great majority of these specify that 
the wool in question is of English origin. 

8 On the declining value of the farm see H. Moranvillé, “Rapports 4 Philippe VI de Valois 
sur ses finances,” BEC, 48 (1887), 387. After being governed for two decades by the licensing 
system established in Ord., 11, 478-481 (28 February, 1321), the haut passage was revised in 1342 
(AD Herault A 4, fols. 183v-184; AN PP 117, p. 473), when regular rates were established for 
English and Burgundian wool, the latter being assessed twice as much. 

9 J. R. Strayer, “Pierre de Chalon and the Origin of the French Customs Service,” Festschrift 
Percy Ernst Schramm zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstag von Schulern und Freunden zugeeignet (Wiesbaden, 
1964), 334 ff. 

10 The relevant ordinances on the droit de rive are Ord., 1, 783-784; 2, 148-149; 11, 487-492. 
See also the discussion of L. L. Borrelli de Serres, Recherches sur divers services publics du XTIT@ au 
AVI siécle (Paris, 1895-1905), 2, 451, hereafter cited as Recherches. Both Vuitry (Régime fi- 
nancier, 1, 133-135) and Bigwood (‘Politique de Ja laine,” 85) regard the tax arrangement as 
a concession to the merchants who had suffered from the complete prohibition of exports in June. 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 19 


particularly interesting about this tax, however, is that it seems to have 
been a war measure. Enacted when the crown was urgently seeking 
money to finance a new conflict with England, it was referred to as a 
subsidy,+ discontinued in some areas when peace came in June, 1325,¥ 
and re-established everywhere by the end of that year when a new war 
occurred in Flanders.1* Since it was not, strictly speaking, a war subsidy, 
the crown kept collecting it in the peaceful years after 1329, but cancelled 
it in 1333, probably hoping to cultivate public opinion while seeking 
a feudal aid.14 The droit de reve was back in force soon after the outbreak 
of the Hundred Years’ War and was justified as a war measure as late 
as 1340215 Thereafter it remained a permanent part of the royal tax 
structure, although its value declined from 60,000 to 40,000 livres tournois 


Ἡ FT Ch. IV, no. 7293, describes this export tax as a war subsidy and Viard (ibid., xxi) 
certainly regarded it as a war measure. In Mignon, no. 1730-88 are listed many accounts for 
1325 with the war subsidy and the export tax intermingled under a single heading in such a 
way as to suggest strongly that Mignon believed both to be established for support of the war. 

12 AM Montpellier G-6, no. 3407-08; Mignon, no. 1736, 1448. In some areas of northern 
France the export tax continued to be collected through the whole year (Mignon, no. 1734, 1761), 
and this seems also to have been true for Paris (¥T Ch. IV, no. 7279, 7293, 7438, 7775, 8070, 
8387, 9151, etc.). 

13 Mignon, no. 1748, for instance, indicates resumption of collection in the bailiwicks of 
Chaumont and Macon and the seneschalsy of Carcassonne on 12 December 1325. Some weeks 
earlier, Charles IV had agreed to help the count of Flanders put down a revolt which had 
smoldered in the county for two years. See C. V. Langlois, in E. Lavisse (ed.), Histoire de 
France (Paris, 1900-11), 3, pt. 2, 310. 

14 There are many documents indicating the cancellation of the 4 d./l. export tax in early 
March, 1333, among them AM Alés I-S 23, no. 1; BN Doat 8, fols. 147-149v; HL, 10, cols. 
725-726. These do not indicate clearly why the tax was cancelled, but it is perhaps no coin- 
cidence that several other important fiscal developments were taking place at about the same 
time. The king was trying to levy a feudal aid, which has been discussed briefly by Molinier 
in HL, 9, 469, note 3, and J. Viard, “Les ressources extraordinaires de la royauté sous Philippe 
VI de Valois,” Revue des questions historiques, 44 (1888), 171-175. Late in March the three Estates 
were summoned to an assembly at Orleans to discuss the coinage. See R. Cazelles, La société 
politique et la crise de la royauté sous Philippe de Valois (Paris, 1958), 128, hereafter cited as Société 
politique. Following this assembly the crown ordered moderate debasement of the coinage and 
liberalized the usury law (below, note 70). These different events must surely have been con- 
nected with one another. 

15 Evidence of the tax in Normandy during 1338-39 may be found in L. Delisle (ed.), Actes 
normands de la chambre des comptes sous Philippe de Valois (Rouen, 1871), 184-186, 210-211. Foreign 
merchants at Harfleur were excused from paying it (Ord., 2, 135) in 1339. Early in 1340 (AD 
Hérault A 4, fols. 90v-91v, 130r-v) the export tax is again mentioned, this time as a levy for 
the needs of the war. It was most probably reinstated in 1337 when the war began and when 
the government undertook various fiscal expedients. In May, 1337, royal officers in Langue- 
doc were exercizing some control over exports (BN Doat 52, fol. 245r-v) and perhaps they 
resumed collecting the droit de réve about this time. 


20 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


between 1332 and 1344216 In 1369 it was incorporated into a 12 d./l. 
(5%) imposition foraine on goods exported from those parts of the kingdom 
paying the royal aides on domestic sales.27 

Another tax on foreign trade which directly affected some Italians 
was neither permanent nor, strictly speaking, a royal tax at all. It arose 
from letters of marque issued against certain Italian communities for 
acts of piracy and was but one aspect of the continuously bitter com- 
petition among all seaports in the western Mediterranean, French Sicilian, 
Genoese and Aragonese. In response to complaints of his subjects in 
Languedoc, Philip VI issued letters of marque empowering Frenchmen 
to recover 60,000 1.t. from inhabitants of the Genoese port of Savona, 
and following consultation with his barons and prelates in 1333 he ordered 
the seneschals in lower Languedoc to seize the property of those accused 
of preying on French trade.!® In 1335 the crown undertook to recover 
commercial losses now estimated at 115,886 Lt. by instituting a special 
duty of 3 d./1. (1 1/4%) on all goods imported or exported by Genoese 
merchants. Limited to one group of Italians, this levy differed from 
other customs duties in affecting imports as well as exports. Although 
established by the king, the tax was intended merely to settle a private 


16 Moranvillé, “Rapports ἃ Philippe VI ....° BEC 1887, 387, indicates the decline in the 
value of the farm. Both 1332 and 1344 were years of sound money. In 1342, when the coinage 
was seriously debased, the Soderini of Florence paid nearly 45,000 Lt. to farm the tax in the 
two southern seneshalsies of Beaucaire and Carcassonne alone (AD Hérault A 4, fols. 192v-195). 
This figure however, was equal only to about 12,000 1.1. in the reformed currency of 1344. 
Other documents relating to the farm of this export tax between 1342 and 1351, are BN Coll. 
Languedoc 84, fol. 270r, BN ms. fr. 25698, no. 104, 111-113; and AN P 2292, p. 299. Throughout 
this period, Harfleur remained a free port where merchants of all nationalities were under 
special royal safeguard and exempt from the export duty (AN JJ 68, no. 126). 

1? Vuitry, Régime financier, 2, 157. For references to the réve and imposition foraine under 
Charles VI see M. Rey, Le domaine du roi et les finances extraordinaires sous Charles VI, 1388-1413 
(Paris, 1965), 54-55, 177-178, 233. 

18 The Mediterranean maritime cities regularly accused each other of piracy, and in 1310 
Genoa had levied a 3 d./l. droit de réve on Montpellier merchants in retaliation for such acts. 
In Paris the Parlement frequently heard piracy cases. See Actes du Parlement de Paris, IT€ sér. (ed. 
E. Boutaric, Paris, 1864-67), 2, no. 7195-96, and 26 sér. (ed. H. Furgeot, Paris, 1920-60), 1, no. 
2190 (hereafter cited as Parl. Paris). By 1328 Montpellier claimed to have lost 200,000 pounds 
because of piracy. See J. Berthelé and F. Castets (eds.), Archives de la ville de Monipellier, inven- 
taires et documents: Inventaire du Grand Chartier, 1 (Montpellier, 1895-99), no. 3869 (Armoire H. 
Cassette 6). This valuable collection and a supplementary volume edited by O. de Dainville 
(Montpellier, 1955) are hereafter cited as Montpellier: Grand Chartrier. For the letters of marque 
against Savona and the royal consultations and orders of 1333, see ibid., no. 1558-60 (C-20) ; 
Furgeot, Parl. Paris, 1, no. 232, 414; BN Doat 52, fols. 192v-196v; Ord., 3, 239; and A. Ger- 
main, Histoire de la commerce de Montpellier antérieurement ἃ Couverture du port de Cette, Montpellier, 
1861, 1, Piéce justificative no. 102 (hereafter cited as Commerce). 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 921 
claim for damages which had necessitated government action because 
foreigners were involved. From the receipts, the merchants of Narbonne 
were to be reimbursed 5000 1.1. each year.1® In the long run, however, 
this duty amounted to a royal tax because it was subject to diplomatic 
negotiations with Genoa, and the Genoese possessed naval strength which 
the French needed when the Hundred Years’ War broke out.” The 
levy of 3 d./l. continued in effect until 1351, when 75,000 1+. (debased 
money) remained to be collected. In that year it was finally cancelled 
when the Genoese paid 40,000 gold florins to the French government.” 
This sum went into the royal account at the treasury,” and in view of 
the strain placed on royal finances by military defeat and the Black Death 
in the later 1340’s, it is unlikely that the merchants of Languedoc ever 
recovered their losses. 


* 
* 


Two other taxes were collected from Italians purely because they were 
foreigners doing business in the kingdom. Evidently inaugurated by 
Philip IV, these became annual payments by 1320, representing a kind 
of modus vivendi whereby Italians would have certain specified privileges 
and the king certain regular revenues. In the fall of 1295 Philip IV had 
required that all Italian merchants living in designated privileged areas 
— the Champagne fairs, the town of Nimes, or the province of Nar- 
bonne — pay one denier per pound (0.4%) on each sale of merchandise, 
and half that amount on every exchange contract.? Payable by both 
buyer and seller, this tax became known as the botte aux Lombards, and 
may be seen as a license to do business. It continued without change 
for twenty years. 

In the period 1315-20, however, a series of political problems, both 
foreign and domestic, placed the crown in a very difficult financial 


19 AN JJ 69, no. 7; JJ 71, no. 21; Germain, Commerce, 1, P.J. no. 107, 112; 7T. Ph. VE, no. 
1863 and note of Viard. See also Furgeot, Parl. Paris, 1, no. 1004, for the order to enforce this. 
The legal principles involved in the issuance of letters of marque are discussed by R. de Mas- 
Latrie, “Du droit de Marque ou droit de Représailles au moyen Age,” BEC, 27 (1866), 529-577. 

20 Furgeot, Parl. Paris, 1, no. 1743; Germain, Commerce, 1, P.J. no. 113; AN JJ 71, no. 21. 
On the French concessions to Genoese naval commanders and the local reaction in Languedoc, 
see also Germain, Commerce, 1, P.J. no. 116-118; BN ms. fr. 20691, p. 788; AN JJ 71, no. 149. 

21 AN JJ 80, no. 502, published in Ord., 4, 89. 

22 HW. Moranvillé, “Extaits des journaux du trésor,” BEC, 49 (1888), 186. 

23 Qrd., 1, 326 and notes. See also the rather brief discussions in Borrelli de Serres, Recherches, 
2, 458; Strayer, French Taxation, 11 (and notes); and Viard, 7T Ch. IV, xxii. 


29 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


position and the royal need for money led to sharp increases in the tax- 
ation of Italians. In an ordinance of 9 July 1315, Louis X doubled the 
botte aux Lombards to 2 d./l. on sales and purchases of goods in the pri- 
vileged areas. As in 1295 the tax would enable these merchants to live 
and trade under royal protection, escaping other taxes and impositions. 
Contracts between them were not to be challenged as usurious, and 
provision was made for the elimination of fraud and the taxing of certain 
special contracts. All transactions outside the privileged areas were to be 
taxed at the higher rate of 4 d./l. (1 2/3) on sales and one denier on 
each exchange contract (as apparently they had been for some time 
already).?5 Italians not living in the privileged regions were required 
to reside in Paris, St. Omer, or La Rochelle. 

The boite aux Lombards applied only to Italian merchants, who acquired 
important privileges if they met certain residence requirements and paid 
this tax. Shortly before increasing its rates, Louis X had turned his 
attention to other Italians in the kingdom. These also had been able 
to obtain privileges in the past by negotiating a finance with royal officers. 
Now, in 1315, they were subjected to a regular tax, geared to residence 
in the kingdom, not business activity. It amounted to a forced purchase 
of lettres de bourgeoisie in each of the succeeding ten years. To receive this 
privilege, Italians living in France were to pay annually 5% of the value 
of their property (100 sous for every 100 pounds as the documents express 
it). This tax would confer the same rights as the bofte aux Lombards con- 
ferred on merchants in the privileged areas, and the only Italians excused 
from paying were those who had already acquired bourgeois privileges 
by direct finance with Louis X since his accession.2* Evidently the king’s 
orders were poorly enforced or evaded by the Italians, perhaps when 
the government was distracted by the sudden death of Louis X and the 
ensuing succession dispute in 1316. In any case, Philip V issued a stern 


34 Ord., 1, 584-586. A slightly different version has been published by C. Piton, Les Lombards 
en France et ἃ Paris, 1 (Paris, 1892), 233-240, hereafter cited as Lombards. 

5 A text published by Piton, ibid., 240-242, indicates the existence of a 4 d. /l. rate at Paris 
in June of 1314. In 1338, Venetians were excused from paying at this rate (AN JJ 68, no. 26), 
which appears to have remained constant throughout this period. 

36. Ord., 1, 582-584. This mandate refers to the botte aux Lombards as the double denier being 
paid by Italian merchants at the fairs. Since it was not until a week later that Louis increased 
that tax to 2 d./l., this reference must be to the old rate of 1 d. fl. which was “double” in the 
sense of being payable by both buyer and seller. Throughout this period, references to the 
botte aux Lombards were often ambiguous as to its rate (see below, note 31). For examples of 
special transactions with Italians seeking privileges, see AN JJ 53, no. 187; JJ 64 A, no. 61, 442, 
691; JJ 56, no. 165. 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 93 


new mandate on 14 February 1317, denouncing diversis fraudibus et malictis, 
dispatching commissioners to collect the 5% tax or some substitute 
finance, and ordering Italians who were guilty to arrange payment before 
the king’s court by 24 June.2” Although the tax was again described as 
being for ten years only, it became permanent, being farmed for 22,500 1.1. 
in 1330, and appearing in various documents of the following generation.”* 

As originally established, this 5% property assessment should have been 
payable only by those Italians not already subject to the botte aux Lombards 
since both payments were for similar privileges, including exemption 
from other taxation. Very early, however, the two appear to have over- 
lapped. Louis X assigned to his cousin Louis of Clermont the royal 
income from Italians, and when the king died, his brother Philip con- 
firmed this arrangement. From an ensuing controversy between Philip V 
and the Italians at the Champagne fairs we learn that Louis X had ex- 
tended the 5% property tax to these merchents and that they had avoided 
it by agreeing to pay an additional 3 d./l. (1 1/4%) on sales and 6 d. on 
exchange transcations, over and above the botte aux Lombards. The pro- 
ceeds from their taxes were to go to Louis of Clermont until he had 
received the sum promised by the late king.?® This arrangement seems 
to have been of short duration and must have lapsed as soon as Clermont 
received his money. After 1317 we hear only of the boite aux Lombards 
and the 5% property tax, with both apparently affecting all resident 
Italians who bought and sold goods or made exchange contracts, subject 
always to the possibility of a special finance with the crown. 

The history of the bofte aux Lombards in the reign of Philip V (1316-22) 
is obscure and uncertain because of ambiguous wording in the documents. 
In September, 1317, the tax was farmed for four years at 11,000 1.t. 
annually and the king established various measures aimed at enforcing 
efficient collection.2° This document, and most others referring to the 
tax under Philip V, call it the deniers et maille, quite possibly no more 
than an informal restatement of Louis X’s 2 d./l. on sales and one maille 
or obole (1/2 d.) on exchange contracts. On the other hand, the same 


2? Ord., 1, 630-631. 

28 The farm of 1330 (a year of sound money) is indicated in H. Moranvillé, “Notes de sta- 
tistique douaniére sous Philippe VI de Valois,” BEC, 64 (1903), 569-573. Other references 
to the tax are in 1329 (Moranvillé, “Rapports 4 Philippe VI ...,” BEC, 1887, 383), 1337 (7T 
Ph. VI, no. 305), 1338 (note of J. Viard in AN AB xix 2640), 1340 (AD Hérault A 4, fols. 89r-v, 
154-156r), and 1343 (AN JJ 74, no. 248). 

29 AN JJ 53, no. 115; BN ms. fr. 16200, fols. 238r-241v. A court decision in 1322 (Boutaric, 
Parl. Paris, II, no. 6817), concerned a dispute arising from this tax during 1317. 

30 Ord., 1, 650-652 (9 September 1317). 


24 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


words often appear in documents of the first two Valois kings when the 
tax was definitely 1 1/2 d./l. (0.6%) on sales of goods (the terms denier 
et maille and trois oboles being used somewhat interchangeably). In short 
it remains unclear whether Philip V retained his brother’s rate for the 
botte aux Lombards or reduced it by 25°4 when he farmed it in 1317.3! 

The tax was definitely lower under Charles IV, who acceeded to the 
throne soon after expiration of the four-year farm of 1317. Charles 
reduced the botte aux Lombards to 1 d./l. on sales,®* perhaps in return for 
numerous gifts received from Italians in 1322 on the occasion of his 
“joyous accession.” These amounted to 3134 1.1. and other gifts in No- 
vember, 1323, totalled 5320 1.1.38 

By 1330, however, the Italians again were paying at a higher rate 
— 11/2 d./l. on all transactions in the privileged areas.*! The new in- 
crease doubtless occurred either in 1327 when an early peace forced 
cancellation of the crown’s war subsidy, or in 1328-29 when Philip VI, 
whose position was not strong, had to seek revenue from sources that 
were safe politically.2* After 1330 the rate stabilized and the denier et 
maille is mentioned in many documents of the succeeding decades.** 


31 The group of documents (ibid.) which announced the four-year farm of the tax ordered 
loss of bourgeois privileges for any who failed to pay. These texts specifically mention Louis X’s 
enactment of 1315 (above, note 24) and thus ought to refer to a bofie aux Lombards of 2 d./I. 
However, all specific references to the rate are to deniers et maille, denier et obole, etc., and the same 
is true in a number of later documents (AN JJ 58, no. 333; Ord., 1, 749-750; JT Ch. IV, no. 
1433-34) as well as one of June, 1317 (AN JJ 54A, no. 442). Viard, in JT Ch. IV, xxviii, believed 
the rate was 1 1/2 d./l. under Philip V, and it is entirely possible that Philip did indeed reduce 
the tax before farming it in the autumn of 1317. For the levy of 1 1/2 d./l. under Philip VI 
and John II, see below, note 36. 

32 FT Ch. IV, no. 4890, 7012-13, 7371, 7488, 7582-83, 8174, 8382. 

33 Ibid., no. 63-87, 97, 114, 215, 341, 960-964, 1060, and 4094-4137. See the discussion by 
Viard, ibid., xxvii-xxviii. 

34 Moranvillé, “Notes de statistique ...,” BEC, 1903, 569-573, indicating that it was farmed 
for 12,500 Lt. 

35 In late March 1327, peace was made (AN K 41, no. 16), and a subsidy granted for the 
war by Paris and other towns was returned. See A. Hellot (ed.), “Chronique parisienne ano- 
nyme de 1316 ἃ 1339,” Mémoires de la Société de UVhistoire de Paris, 11 (1885), 111, hereafter cited 
as “Chron. parisienne.” Lacking extraordinary subsidies, the crown may have increased the 
boite aux Lombards at this time. However, our only document mentioning Italians in 1327 
(BN NAF 7373, fols. 297-298) seems to be describing one isolated case of royal extortion, as 
10,000 pounds were taken from Lombards in the bailiwick of Macon. Raised to the throne by 
the great magnates and representing a new dynasty, Philip VI had to exercize fiscal caution, 
even when collecting the subsidy for his successful Flemish campaign of 1328. For the royal 
use of fiscal expedients to augment revenues in 1327-29, see J. Henneman, “Enquéteurs-Réfor- 
mateurs and Fiscal Officers in Fourteenth Century France,” Traditio, 24 (1968), hereafter cited 
as “Enquéteurs.” ἢ 

36 We encounter this tax subsequently in the following years: 1332 (Furgeot, Parl. Paris, 1, 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 95 


The surviving register of Treasury Journals for the reign of Charles IV 
is complete for the first four years of that reign, We find in it no mention 
of the 5% property tax on Italians but a number of references to a tax 
of one denier per pound and many more to “finances of Italians” or “finances 
for the botte aux Lombards”.8? Evidently these finances were payments 
made by Italians (individuals or companies) in lieu of one or both of 
the two regular taxes they owed, for these entries do not mention usury. 
The payments made in 1323, mostly in January and November, covered 
varying periods of time — some for one year, still more for two or two 
and one-half years.28 Only very small sums were involved. The total 
given for forty entries recorded for 14 November 1323 is only 1353 1.0.3 
This group of payments evidently brought up to date all such finances 
by Italians through 1323, for the next payments recorded are in January, 
1325 and are explicitly stated to cover the year ending at Christmas 1324. 
With these entries the transactions described as financiae Ytalicorum under- 
go a radical transformation. Where the earlier entries indicate fines for 
two years or more in most cases, those of January 1325 cover but a single 
year, yet the amounts paid were impressive : generally 500 or 750 pounds 
parisis, There are seventy-three entries for January alone and no less 
than 169 more for the period from August to the end of 1324.4° Totalling 
these entries, Viard found that sums collected in the months of September, 
October, and November, 1325 alone were four times the total collections 
recorded for the years 1322-24 and much more than the combined annual 
farm of the two regular taxes on Italians.“1 Quite obviously the fine to 


no. 579); 1336 (AN JJ 70, no. 7); 1339 (AD Hérault A 4, fols. 172-175); BN NAF 7389, fols. 
252v); 1340 (AD Hérault A 4, fols. 102-104); 1345 (AD Hérault A 4, fols. 236r-240v); 1349 
(AN PP 117, fols. 629-630); 1352 (Moranvillé, “Extraits ...,” BEC, 1888, 180); 1357 (AN PP 
117, pp. 734; AD Hérault A 4, fols. 333v-335v); 1363 (AN JJ 93, no. 213); and 1368 (AN P 
2294, pp. 679-680). 

37 Among those described specifically as finances for 1 d./l. busta Yialicorum (the botie aux 
Lombards) are FT Ch. IV, no. 7371, 7488, 7582-83, 8174, and 8382. Scores of other entries 
mentioning Italian finances are indicated below, notes 38-40. 

38 Jbid., no. 2312-14, 2325-27, 2334, 2337-41, 2346-48, 2353-54, 2364-65, and 2448 for 
January, 1323, after only two entries (no. 104, 804) for 1322. Forty more finances are recor- 
ded for November, 1323 (no. 4054-93). 

39 Tbid., no. 4054-4093. 

40 For January, ibid., no. 6651-53, and seventy other entries through 6988. Collections later 
in the year begin with no. 8392 and end with no. 9378. 

41 The 5% tax and the bofte aux Lombards were farmed for 22,500 Lt. and 12,500 1.1. respec- 
tively in 1330 (Moranvillé, “Notes de statistique ...,” BEC, 1903, 569-573), Viard (fT Ch. IV, 
xxviii) computed total collections of 48,840 l.p. (61,050 1.1.) from Italians in the short period 
of September-November, 1325. For the entire period 1322-24 he found only 11,435 1p, from 
Italians recorded in the Treasury Journals. 


26 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


avoid one or two troublesome but regular assessments had given way 
to a major extortion. Once again, the action must have been dictated 
by serious royal financial needs, for war with England had broken out 
in Gascony during 1324 and the king had encountered grave difficulty 
in raising money for troops.” 


* 
* Ok 


These large finances paid by Italians in 1325 bring us to the third and 
most interesting type of exaction which the French crown demanded 
of them in this period — the large occasional extortions. These went 
under various names and were generally (though not invariably) justified 
by the accusation that the Italians had violated the usury ordinances. 
Already vulnerable as foreigners, they were doubly so as money-lenders. 
Louis IX and Philip III had both issued ordinances against “Lombards, 
Cahorsins, and foreign usurers,”4* while Philip IV had extorted money 
from them in 1291-92, 1303-04, and perhaps again in 1309.44 Extensive 
documentation on this subject becomes available only in 1311, when 
Philip IV needed to deal with a chronic shortage of funds while simul- 
taneously bolstering his image as the zealous defender of Catholic mo- 
rality. Dramatic action against usury might be consistent with both 
objectives.45 

In July, 1311, Philip attacked usury in a curious ordinance which 
actually tolerated higher interest rates than previous royal enactments 
τ at the Champagne fairs 2 1/2% from one fair to the next (15% per 
annum) and outside the fairs 4 d./l. per month (or 20% per annum). Those 


42 Although the crown sought troops in 1324 only in regions close to Gascony there was strong 
opposition from such places as Périgueux and Limoges. See BN Doat 243, fols. 14r-20v; J. N. 
Moreau, Mémoire sur la constitution politique de la ville et cité de Périgueux avec recueil des titres et autres 
piéces justificatives (Paris, 1775), 2, 195-209. 

43 Ord., 1, 96 (1269); 298-300 (1274). 

44 Strayer, French Taxation, 17-18 and notes, has very briefly summarized these earlier actions. 
The extortion of 1309-10 is sparsely documented, and we may infer that it was not a major 
seizure, both because a large confiscation was attempted soon afterwards (see below) and 
because Philip IV was devoting his major effort in 1309-10 to the collection of a feudal aid: 
Other general summaries of royal relations with Italian money-lenders in the fourteenth century 
are found in studies devoted mainly to royal credit transactions: A. Bearwood, Alien Merchants 
in England, 1350-1377 (Cambridge, Mass., 1931); E. B. and M. M. Fryde, “Public Credit” 
Cambridge Economic History of Europe (ed. M. Postan et al.), 3 (Cambridge, England, 1963), 430 ff. 

45 In a forthcoming study of royal finance under Philip IV and his two older sons, Prof. 
Elizabeth Brown will expound the interesting thesis that Philip was deeply concerned with the 
moral implications of his fiscal policies. It is her view that the usury legislation of 1311-12 was 
carefully timed with respect to the church council at Vienne. 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 97 


who charged in excess of these rates, however, were threatened with 
severe penalties.“6 From a document of mid-September we learn that 
Philip had ordred all Italian usurers to leave the kingdom by November, 
1311, paying the king what they owed him before they left.47_ Unquestion- 
ably the crown wished only to collect a fine, for the Italian money-lenders 
were too valuable to be expelled completely. In mid-November Philip 
required Italians who were under arrest and demanded a hearing to 
appear in the immediate future before a royal court.4* It was there that 
they probably arranged to pay whatever finance the government demanded, 
for by the end of January, 1312, a new usury ordinance included a clause 
permitting the Italians previously expelled to reside in the kingdom 
subject to certain conditions. The usury legislation of the previous July 
was reiterated in this enactment and there was an added injunction that 
royal monetary ordinances should be scrupulously obeyed.*® Late in 
1312 the king issued the final ordinance in this series, indicating his 
intention to prohibit all usury, not merely excessive usury as some had 
apparently believed.*° 

These enactments of 1311-12 illustrate one method by which the 
crown might levy a tax on money-lenders suspected of usury violations. 
The usury law was re-enacted; the Italians were declared to have 
violated it; and then, under the threat of imprisonment or deportation 
they were compelled to pay a large sum. Beyond the royal ordinances 
just discussed there remains little evidence regarding the seizure of 
1311-12. Financial records are fragmentary,*! and there is no trace of 


48 Ord., 1, 484-487. 

ΑἹ Tbid., 489-490. No doubt this expulsion order occurred between the July and September 
ordinances which have survived. A likely date is 22 August when Philip IV re-expelled certain 
Jews who had practiced usury after re-entering the kingdom (ibid., 488). The original ex- 
pulsion of Jews in 1306 is described by Strayer, French Taxation, 18. It seems very unlikely that 
Philip ever contemplated carrying out such drastic action with respect to Italian usurers. 

48 Ord., 1, 490-491. : 

49 Thid., 494-496. 

50 Jbid., 508-509. It is not entirely clear what the king meant by this order. Presumably 
he merely wished to stress the maximum legal interest rates previously set forth, but perhaps 
he had decided to revoke the 20% interest allowable outside the fairs. When we next hear of 
interest permitted outside the fairs (1330, below, note 64) the legal maximum was only 5%. 

51 Strayer, French Taxation, 17, note 52, cites one document, in Bibliothéque de Rouen, ms. 
33400, fols. 29v-30v. Another undated fragmentary account from the same collection has been 
published by R. Fawtier, Comptes royaux 1285-1314 (Documents financiers, 3, Paris, 1953-56), pt. 2, 
beginning no. 22518. Indicating a seizure of Italian property in the Beaucaire district which 
produced over 5300 pounds, it may well refer to the confiscation of 1311-12. Amounts taken 
ranged from 13% to 22% and payments varied from 20 to 400 1.1. 


28 1. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


formal judicial proceedings, prosecution of usurers other than Italians 
and Jews, or any effort to recover usurious loans from the borrowers. 
It would seem then that this extortion was directed solely at alien 
money-lenders who exceeded the legal maximum interest rate. It was 
not part of any root-and-branch assault on usury in the kingdom. 

The accession of Louis X in an atmosphere of rebellion and unrest 
found the Italians vulnerable once again to royal fiscal measures. We 
have seen that Louis instituted the 5% property tax in 1315 and at the 
same time raised the rates of the botte aux Lombards. It was perhaps not 
practicable to attempt another sizeable extortion so soon after that of 
1311-12, but numerous Italian companies were required to pay some 
sort of fine at the end of 1314. Some of these payments were sharply 
higher than those which would be offered at another “joyous acession” 
in 1322.5 Although the Italians were not singled out as usurers in 1315, 
Louis X did attempt to raise additional money for his war in Flanders 
by a general enforcement of the usury prohibition. Affecting French- 
men as well as foreigners, it was associated with the negotiation of the 
war subsidy in 1315.53 Unlike 1311, it was to be general throughout 
the kingdom, and the crown’s zealous commissioners aroused resent- 
ment in Quercy, where they were accused of molesting legitimate mer- 
chants as well as manifest usurers.*4 

It was apparently not until 1324 and 1325 that the Italians were again 
subjected to extraordinary payments besides their regular taxes. When 
war broke out in Gascony, Charles IV was very cautious about seeking 
a war subsidy from his subjects and such limited efforts as he made in 
1324 encountered resistance.** To meet his rising expenses he turned 


52 The finances collected at the end of 1314 are cited by Strayer, French Taxation, 17-18, note 
52, after some of Menant’s treasury journal exerpts in Bibliotheque de Rouen, ms. 33400, fols. 29r- 
30v. Individual payments ranged as high as 743 1.1. and clearly produced more money for 
the crown than the “gift” to Charles IV in 1322 which consisted of several dozen payments 
totalling 3134 pounds (above, note 33). 

53 The instructions given to the subsidy commissioners in 1315 are found in J. Petit, et al., 
Essai de restitution des plus anciens mémoriaux de la Chambre des Comptes de Paris, Paris, 1899, 211- 
213. Evidence that subsidy payments and fines for usury and monetary violations were 
collected together is in Mignon, no. 1645-47, 1650, 1654-55, 1658, 1660, 1668, 1688-89, 1691-92. 
For the implications of this policy, see Henneman, “Enguéteurs.” 

54 A letter of Louis X in AM Cajarc, sér. CC Supp., ordered royal officers to proceed only 
against manifest usurers. Cf. E. Albe, “Cahors: Inventaire raisonné et analytique des archives 
municipales,” pt. 2, Bulletin de la Société des Etudes littéraires, scientifiques et artistiques du Lot, 41 
(1920), no. 274-275. See also G. La Coste, Histoire générale de la province de Quercy, Cahors, 1873- 
1876, II, pp. 462-463. 

55 Above, note 42. 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 29 


to the Italians, and the Treasury Journals indicate that they made several 
different sorts of contributions during the next two years. The first of 
these was apparently a forced loan. It was not unusual for the crown 
to borrow periodically from Italian merchant bankers, but beginning 
in September 1324 the Treasury Journals record a different kind of entry 
—— the receipt of many small sums described as loans in subsidio guerrarum 
Vasconie (or some slight variation of these words). The bulk of these 
appear before the end of 1324 and the great majority of the entries 
indicate that the lender was an Italian.5* These loans, received early 
in the war, appear to represent a stop-gap measure intended to produce 
some revenue during the winter truce, before the collection of a general 
war subsidy was possible. 

These were but one of several contributions which the Italians in 
France had to make to support Charles IV’s war with England. At the 
end of 1324, those in the export trade were hit by the establishment of 
the 4 d/l. droit de réve, already described as a war measure.*” Then in 
January, 1325, and again later in the year, there occurred those drastic 
increases in the financiae Ytalicorum which had been so modest earlier in 
the reign.**. There is no evidence that this extortion was tied to the pro- 
secution of usury or that there were any threats of arrest or deportation, 
but some sort of pressure was obviously used to extract such large sums. 
It was also in January that the king launched his effort to collect a sub- 
sidy from the whole kingdom, and as in 1315 the commissioners sent to 
negotiate this tax were assigned additional powers including the in- 
vestigation and punishment of usurers.*® Hence a general enforcement 
of the usury laws was part of the royal fiscal effort in 1325. 

Besides the “loan” of 1324-25 and the two large payments in 1325 
described as “finances,” the Treasury Journals record one further con- 
tribution made by the Italians. Between March 22 and the end of May, 


56 In 77 Ch. IV there are fifty-three entries between no. 5833 and 6230 which record such 
loans in the last quarter of 1324. A score of other entries between no. 7281 and 8984 are for 
loans during 1325. Of more than seventy entries all told, forty-five specify that the lender is 
an Italian while the rest identify him merely as a bourgeois of some French town. It is probable 
that most of these were in fact Italians having royal bourgeois privileges. 

57 Above, notes 11-13. 

58 Above, notes 37-41. 

59 For 1315, see above, note 53. In 1325, commissioners were dispatched to negotiate a war 
subsidy under letters of commission dated 18 January: HL, X, cols. 632-634; AN JJ 64, no. 55; 
BN NAF 7600 (Fontanieu 67), fols. 153v-156. Two days later, new letters assigned sweeping 
additional powers, including investigation of usury and collection of various fines: BN Coll. 
Languedoc 83, fol. 177r-v; AN JJ 64, no. 560. Again the usury investigation created an outcry 
in Quercy: BN Doat 119, fol. 57. 


30 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


1325, we find numerous “gifts” by Italians. These, like the earlier 
“loans,” were in subsidio guerrarum.®° 

Thus in time of war or political unrest, when the government needed 
to augment revenues with a minimum of political risk, the alien mer- 
chants and money-lenders were vulnerable to a variety of exactions, 
often sudden in nature and involving large amounts. Yet the position 
of foreigners seems to have been even more precarious in time of peace, 
for then the king could not demand from his subjects any subsidy or ex- 
traordinary aid based on military service. The peacetime years of 1305- 
1313 had witnessed the more ruthless and spectacular fiscal expedients 
of Philip the Fair, among these the threatened expulsion of the Lombards 
in 1311-12. A similar period of peace occurred between 1329 and 
1336, when Philip VI followed some of the precedents established by 
his uncle a generation before. In 1330-31 the crown undertook the most 
sizeable extortion from Italians to be attempted up to this time. 

The king instituted proceedings on 8 November 1330, when Lombards 
throughout the kingdom were arrested,® and a usually reliable chron- 
icler states that they were held captive for three weeks before being re- 
leased.** They were required to put up bond and report to Paris on a 
certain day. It appears from the correspondence of one Italian firm 
that interest of more than 5% outside the Champagne fairs was now 
being called usury.** So strict a definition of the term must have ren- 
dered illegal virtually all money-lending in France except at the fairs. 
We may speculate that many more outstanding loans violated the usury 
laws in 1330-31 than in 1311. The Italians themselves were fined a 
large sum, although the total amount involved is not certain. In 1332 
a finance of 120,000 1.0. was being apportioned among them, 80% of 
which was payable by Italians living in places other than the Champagne 
fairs.*° The higher interest rates permitted at the fairs obviously meant 
that fewer usury violations occurred there.* 


60 FT Ch. IV, fifty-five entries between no. 7180 and 7780. 

81 Langlois, in Lavisse, Histoire de France, 2, pt. 2, 180-229; Strayer, French Taxation, 17-18, 
77 8. 

82 Lopez and Raymond, Medieval Trade, no. 194. 

83 “Chron. parisienne,” loc. cit., 143. 

84 Lopez and Raymond, Medieval Trade, no. 194, and editors’ notes. 

65 AN PP 117, an ‘nventory of Chamber of Accounts documents, many of which are now 
lost, 443-444. This finance had been made with the gens du roi and was apportioned in June, 
1332, among “Italians of the province of Lombardy.” The same inventory, p. 418, describes 
a payment of 18,000 pounds in 1331 which was apportioned among Sienese and other Italians. 

66 At the fairs 15% per annum remained the legal rate (as in Ord., 1), 484-487, cited above, 
note 46. : : 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 31 


In 1331, however, the crown was not content merely to fine the Italians 
themselves. Such a fine could tap their liquid assets but not the large 
sums owed to them by countless borrowers. Therefore Philip VI and 
his advisers now extended to Italians an expedient used by Philip IV 
in dealing with the Jews. All debts owing to Lombards were declared 
to be cancelled because as usurious contracts they were illegal. Those 
who had borrowed money at interest were excused from paying the 
interest. The principal, however, they were to repay, not to their Italian 
creditors at the appointed time, but to the crown immediately.*” To the 
debtors, who were supposedly being relieved from the “oppressions” of 
extortionate loan sharks, this ordinance must have been a very dubious 
blessing. Although spared the payment of high interest rates, they now 
had to repay their loans more promptly than anticipated, and to royal 
usury commissioners who must have been more formidable creditors 
than alien money-lenders carrying on an illegal business. 

At first the commissioners were to require all debtors to declare under 
oath how much of their debt was interest and how much principal. 
We may well imagine that excessively large amounts were declared to 
be interest and therefore not payable. On 12 January 1331 the govern- 
ment issued new instructions, to the effect that the commissioners were 
to regard three-quarters of the debt as the principal and collect this sum. 
In an effort, perhaps, to reduce debtor protests, this new ordinance also 
deferred payment of the principal to the crown for four months.®* In fact, 
the collections probably extended over a much longer period, for the 
commissioners do not seem to have been recalled until 1333 or later. 
By that year the king probably concluded that he had collected as much 
as he could from this latest enforcement of the usury laws. Not only 


87 Qrd., 2, 59-61, describes this enactment which has since been lost. 

68 Jhid. The same document is copied in “Chron. parisienne,” 143-144. Cf. Vuitry, Régime 
Financier, 1, 484-485. 

69 Usury investigations, begun as early as September, 1330 in Rouergue (BN Doat 146, fol. 
214), were extended to the whole kingdom by the royal order of 2 May 1331 (AN JJ 79B, no. 
39), and the prosecution was in no way restricted to Italians. There is evidence of continuing 
pursuit of usurers in Furgeot, Parl. Paris, 1, no. 476, 814, 1075-78, 1087, and AN JJ 66, no. 1471. 
Late in 1331 the king required that all foreign merchants establish residence at the Champagne 
fairs or leave the country within three months unless they ceased the practice of usury (Ord., 
2, 73). Meanwhile (late January, 1331) Philip extended the debt confiscation to those owing 
money to Jews (Montpellier: Grand Chartrier, no. 1218 [G-9]). Only in April, 1333, were com- 
missioners “on the matter of Jews” recalled (ébid., no. 3341-42 [G-5]), and royal pursuit of 
debtors to the Italians may have ended about the same time, since nothing more is heard of 
this confiscation. As late as 1334, however, Italians in Languedoc were under scrutiny for 
possible usury (ibid., no. 1219-20 [G-9]). 


32 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


were debt collections apparently halted, but money-lending at interest 
up to 21 2/3% per annum (1 denier per pound per week) was permitted. 
This authorization occurred at the same time that the 4 d./l. export tax 
was cancelled and the king was attempting to debase the coinage and 
levy an aid for the knighting of his eldest son. It is possible that liberal- 
ization of the usury laws was intended to win the support of the disgruntled 
debtor classes.7° 

Having largely exhausted the Italians as a source of extraordinary 
peacetime revenues, Philip VI had to try other fiscal expedients during 
the remaining years of peace. By 1337, however, France was again in 
conflict with England, in what would prove to be the initial phase of the 
Hundred Years’ War. The crown could again demand a war subsidy 
from the kingdom, but once again supplementary sources of revenue 
were soon needed. As early as April 1337, commissioners were actively 
investigating usury violations in Languedoc, perhaps as the prelude to 
subsidy negotiations, as in 1315 and 1325.7 Their activities may also 
have been intended to lay the groundwork for a new extortion from 
the Italians, for on 19 May “Lombard usurers” were ordered imprisoned. 
It is not clear whether they themselves were fined, but there was certainly 
a new confiscation of debts owing to them, as in 1331. Debtors were 
again to declare the amount of their debts and pay the principal to the 
crown. ‘They were forbidden to repay their Italian creditors under pain 
of having to pay a like amount to the king.” This last provision suggests 
that many debtors preferred to maintain their credit standing and re- 
duce the principal payable to the crown by reaching some accomodation 
with their creditors. In any case it is clear that the device employed in 
1331 had proved so lucrative that the government was ready to try it 
again. Borrowers contracting usurious loans were now as vulnerable 
as the usurers themselves, although alienation of the debtor classes was 
sometimes politically unwise. Coming at the very outbreak of hostilities 


Τὸ Following an assembly of the three Estates in late March, 1333, the crown issued letters 
which, among other things, ordered moderate debasement of the silver coinage, instituted certain 
reforms, and authorized the lending of money at interest up to 21 2/3% (Ord., 2, 83-88; 12, 
16-18; AN P 2291, pp. 87-101). From “Chron. parisienne,” Joc. cit., 151, we infer that the per- 
mission to charge interst was regarded as quite noteworthy. It has been pointed out above, 
note 14, that these acts coincided with a number of other important fiscal developments, and 
it seems possible to conclude that the right to lend at interest and the cancellation of the export 
tax were royal concessions to those who were now being asked to pay a feudal aid and acquiesce 
in coinage debasement. 

ΤΙ Germain, Commerce, P.J. no. 112; Piton, Lombards, 1, 37, note 1. For 1315 and 1325 see 
above, notes 53 and 59 respectively. 

2 Ord., 12, 35-36; Vuitry, Régime financier, 1, 485-486. 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 33 


with England, this confiscation of debts must be regarded as a fiscal 
measure, notwithstanding Vuitry’s unexplained assertion to the contrary.” 

Periodic seizure of the principal of usurious loans seems by this time 
to have become established policy. The same step was repeated in 1340, 
a year notable for the first significant military action of the war and an 
unusually wide variety of royal fiscal measures. At the beginning of 
June money-lenders were arrested and the king cancelled all debts owed 
to Lombards, Jews, and other “outremontains usurers.” As in 1337, the 
principal was to be paid to the crown, and anyone repaying his creditor 
would be fined an equivalent sum by the king.’> Details are lacking as 
to what sums may have been collected by the government, but returns 
may have been disappointing since only three years had elapsed since 
the last confiscation. Not for seven years would borrowers again be 
tapped for funds. In the meantime, royal extortions from the Lombards 
continued, but the crown had to content itself with such smaller sums 
as could be gained from the Italians themselves. 

Towards the end of 1341 Florentines in the kingdom were told to pay 
the king a “subsidy,” perhaps similar to the “gifts” or “loans” in subsidto 
guerrarum, which had been collected by Charles IV.”* In 1345, the royal 
efforts to obtain a general war subsidy encountered usually stiff opposition, 
especially in Languedoc, because a truce had been in effect. When the 
truce terminated in the spring of that year, the inability of the French 
to support an effective army led to serious English inroads in Languedoc.’ 
The crown was not slow to realize that money was urgently needed and 
that was considerable opposition to taxation. As early as 30 April 1345 
the government began a new exploitation of the Italians. Local officials 
were told to have the Lombards assemble “to hear certain things which 
the gens des comptes wish to set forth.””® On 27 May, Philip VI issued 


73. Régime financier, 1, 486. 

74 See J. Henneman, “Financing the Hundred Years’ War: Royal Taxation in France in 
1340,” Speculum, 42 (1967), 275-298, hereafter cited as “Financing.” 

% Ord., 2, 143-145; BN NAF 7389, fol. 276r; AD Hérault A 4, fol. 122r-v. See also Cazelles, 
Société politique, 279. As in 1331, the debts owed to Jews as well as those owed to Italians were 
subject to this seizure. 

76 AN PP 117, p. 472, which is merely an inventory, is our only source for this “subsidy.” 
Given two confiscations of debts in the preceding five years, rather little could have been ex- 
pected or realized from Italians at this time. The singling out of Florentines is interesting in 
the light of the celebrated failure of major Florentine banking houses which occurred a few 
years later. 

77 BN Coll. Languedoc 84, fol.s 290r-300v; HL, IX, 572 and notes; M. Bertrandy, Etude sur 
les chroniques de Froissart: Guerre de Guienne, 1345-1346 (Bordeaux, 1870), passim, especially 20-187. 

%8 Mentioned by Cazelles, Société politique, 279, and copied by Viard in AN AB xix 2639, 
these orders are in a manuscript in Bibliothéque de Rouen, ms. 33402, fol. 19r. 


34 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


some additional instructions on the subject?® and by 14 June the seneschal 
of Beaucaire had received orders to assign additional persons to the 
commission for bringing Lombard usurers into court.8° It would seem 
that the usurers themselves were fined, with no effort to confiscate debts 
owed to them. Once again, some sort of “gift” or forced loan was pro- 
bably the royal objective. 

It was in 1347 that the government next undertook to confiscate debts 
to usurers as well as to extort money from the Italians themselves. The 
extortion begun at this time is unusually well-documented and is of great 
interest because of its long duration. It was not finally terminated until 
late in 1363, and as such it represents the most ambitious effort at con- 
sistent enforcement of the usury laws hitherto attempted. As always, 
royal policy was determined by the crown’s fiscal necessities, and such 
developments as the Black Death in 1348 and the subsequent capture 
of the king at Poitiers in 1356 no doubt influenced the decision to pursue 
the debtors of usurers for so long a period. Many of the transactions 
made with these debtors were recorded in the royal chancery registers, 
and prolonged enforcement led to protests by the Estates General which 
further augment our documentation. 

Despite the more abundant evidence, some uncertainties remain con- 
cerning the confiscation begun in 1347. It has long been supposed that 
this action commenced at the end of the year, when a royal ordinance 
called for the confiscation of the principal of all debts owed to Lombards.® 
This assumption is supported by a subsequent ordinance which indi- 
cates that the seizure of debts followed an arrét of the Parlement on 6 De- 
cember 1347. However, no surviving document records this act or any 
other judicial action in the latter part of the year,®? and the ordinance 


79 Germain, Commerce, 2, P.J. no. 126. This document is an order not to molest or persecute 
the Lombards as a result of the summons cited in the last note. It seems that its purpose was 
merely to apply pressure, perhaps to get a Joan from them. 

80 Montpellier: Grand Chartrier, no. 1127 (C-2). The commissioners are mentioned as late as 
August, 1346 (AN PP 117, p. 601) but the reference is only to their salaries and therefore not 
proof that they were still active. Cazelles, Société politique, p. 270, note 10, has noted the reference 
of a chronicler to an extortion from Italians in 1346, but see below, note 88. 

81 Ord., 2, 418-420. A brief recent study devoted to this subject is A. L. Funk, “Confiscation 
of Lombard Debts in France, 1347-1358,” Medievalia et Humanistica, 7 (1952), 51-55, hereafter 
cited as “Lombard Debts.” 

82 Ord., 3, 645, from the text in AN JJ 94, no. 7, and dated 19 November 1363. Vuitry, 
Régime financier, 1, 486, evidently had this document in mind when he referred to an ordinance 
of 15 November 1353. His inaccurate dating and failure to cite a source hindered Funk, who 
was unable to locate this ordinance (“Lombard Debts,” Joc. cit. 52). In any case, the arrét os 
the Parlement mentioned here cannot be located. Secousse, in editing vol. 3 of the Ordonnancef 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 35 


of 28 December did not mark the commencement of the extortion. At 
the most it merely generalized a policy which had already been put 
into effect on a more limited basis, for persons owing money to usurers 
had actually been paying finances to the crown for nine months. 

It now appears that the first royal measures against usurious loans in 
1347 took place as early as mid-February. On the twelfth, Philip VI 
secretly ordered his bailiffs and seneshals to arrest Italian money-lenders, 
seize their property, and cancel their loans.** Hight days later, they were 
ordered banished from the kingdom, evidently in order to set the stage 
for a large fine, following the precedent of 1311-12.% Soon the crown 
began to collect the principal of debts owed to usurers, but there is reason 
to believe that only the credits of certain Italian companies were singled 
out at this time. The Scarampi and two other companies were accused 
of “excesses,”®> and the great bulk of the early collections came from 
their debtors.*® 

On 19 March, there did occur an arrét of the Parlement, the only sur- 
viving evidence of formal judicial action against Italians in 1347. This 
curiously worded document commenced with a colorful account of how 
usurers “oppressed” the king’s subjects, and went on to state that both 
nobles and non-nobles had been victimized in this way. This usury, 
it was stated, prevented “the said nobles and others” from aiding the 
king in his wars. Debts owing to “those who seem culpable” were to be 
confiscated. Although the text specified no particular company, merely 


suggested in a note to this ordinance that the date given for the arrét is somewhat illegible in 
the original, but a reading of AN JJ 94, no. 7, leaves no doubt that 6 December 1347 is correct. 
Furgeot’s inventory of the Parlement’s civil judgments (in this case, the appropriate registers are 
AN X 1a 11 and 12) gives no trace of this decision. Similarly, there is no document dealing with 
Italians in late 1347 in the register of criminal judgments, AN X 2a 5. The act of March, 1347, 
cited below, note 87, remains the only text of this type in 1347 which I have been able to locate. 

83 Cazelles, Société politique, 279; HL, TX, 602. 

84 BN m.. fr. 7222, p. 103. The banishment order was followed by an extortion from Italians, 
evidently after the manner of 1311: Furgeot, Parl. Paris, 2, no. 7764; AN JJ 68, no. 160, 262, 
339. As in 1330-31, this seizure of property was independent of what might be recovered from 
debtors. What is not entirely clear is whether a few companies (below, notes 85-86) actually 
were banished and their property fully confiscated. 

85 Notes of J. Viard, AN AB xix 2640. In FT Ph. VI, no. 653, one finds an assignment of 
fines on the property taken from these companies. 

86 Most of those collections recorded in AN JJ 76 during March and April, 1347 (nos. 18, 
70, 72, 78, 80, 72, 86, 90, 123-24, 132, 144, 146, 149-51, 157, 176, 209, 357, 359-60, 365, 402-04), 
were from debtors of the Scarampi. Some of these persons, moreover, made their initial 
declarations of indebtedness prior to the judicial decision cited in the next note (examples are 
AN JJ 76, nos. 90, 150, 151). 


36 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


“several Lombard usurers, Italians, and outremontains,”®’ it implies that 
some Italians, rather than all, were the objects of this action. 

Most striking, however, is the impression that the crown was parti- 
cularly interested in squeezing money from the nobility. The timing of 
this decision is significant, for in March of 1347 the French government 
was struggling to recover from the disastrous defeat at Crécy and was 
about to launch a series of assemblies aimed at obtaining men and money 
for raising the siege of Calais.8° Having finally fought the pitched battle 
they had wished for, only to suffer ignominious defeat, the nobles were 
likely scapegoats for the Crécy debacle.8® The subsidy negotiations of 
1347 gave evidence of an unenthusiastic response on the part of nobles 
and in the winter of 1347-48 subsidy grants by the towns were made 
subject to the condition that all privileged persons contribute. From 
these developments one infers a growing suspicion that the nobility were 
unwilling to pay their share for the defense of the kingdom.®° The word- 


87 AN X 2a 5, fol. 97r. Usury here was defined as interest in excess of 15%, the traditional 
figure allowed at the Champagne fairs (above, note 66) and confirmed in Philip VI’s fair re- 
gulations of 1344 and 1349 (Ord., 2, 200-207, 308-315). 

88 P, Varin (ed.), Archives administratives de la ville de Reims (Paris, 1843), 2, 1145, 1151-1154 
(hereafter cited as Reims); BN ms. fr. 25698, no. 1607s; Ord., 2, 262-263; and Viard’s extract 
from AM Arras AA 2, no. 52, copied in AN AB xix 2638, are the principal documents regarding 
the subsidy-raising effort in northern France during the spring of 1347. Discussed by Vuitry, 
Régime financier, 2, 27-28, these texts inform us of three bailiwick assemblies held in the regions 
nearest to Calais. The summons of Reims to one of these assemblies was issued on 18 March, 
the day before the act of the Parlement cited in the last note. For a contemporary opinion link- 
ing the seizures of Lombard property to the relief of Calais, see Chronique de Richard Lescot, moine 
de Saint-Denis (1328-1334). Continuation de cette chronique (1344-1364) (ed. Lemoine), Paris, 1896, 
74-75. This is the chronicle mentioned above, note 80, in connection with a citation of Cazelles. 
Under the date 1346 (evidently old style), this chronicle states that Philip VI used the ingentes 
pecunias extorted from the Lombards “to succour the town of Calais.” Subsequently, some 
property of Italians was assigned to bourgeois of Calais who had been forced to leave after the 
English capture of the town (AN JJ 77, no. 169, 178, 292). 

89 Cazelles, Société politique, 399, notes that the French military disasters of 1346 and 1356 
can be regarded also as social phenomena with severe effects on the noble class. Concerning 
scapegoats for Crécy, see his comments, ibid., pp. 178 ff. E. Perroy, The Hundred Years War 
(English ed., tr. W. B. Wells, London, 1951), notes (119) that chroniclers blamed the defeat 
on the rash charges of the French knights, and (120) that Philip VI subsequently lost con- 
fidence in his army. A growing impatience with the nobility would come to a head after the 
second great French defeat at Poitiers ten years later. See the comments and citations of R. 
Delachenal, Histoire de Charles V, 1, Paris, 1909, 247-248. Something of the same popular 
criticism must have been voiced after Crécy. 

80 See Varin, Reims, 2, 1124; Vuitry, Régime financier, 2, 27-28; J. Henneman, “The Black 
Death and Royal Taxation in France, 1347-1351,” Speculum, 43 (1968), hereafter cited as “Black 
Death,” and the documents cited above, note 88. 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 37 


ing of the Parlement’s decision in March, 1347 suggests that the nobles 
had made the exactions of usurers an excuse for evading subsidy requests, 
and that the king was determined to eliminate the basis for such an ar- 
gument and collect some money from them while they were politically 
vulnerable.™ 

The arrét of the Parlement was followed nine days later by letters order- 
ing royal commissioners to collect sums owed to the Lombards.” Such 
collection required considerable bargaining with debtors, who arranged 
to pay the crown in specified installments as much of the principal as 
the commissioners were able to squeeze from them. Actual payments 
were usually so much less than the total amount of the debt that interest 
alone probably does not account for the difference.** Given. the crown’s 
difficult fiscal and military position in the spring of 1347, it is probable 
that Philip VI was prepared to accept a reduced amount in order to 
collect it quickly. 

A curious feature of this confiscation of debts is the fact that numerous 
transactions with debtors were registered with royal confirmation in the 
Trésor des chartes. Whether complete finances or down payments on larger 


91 AN X 2a 5, fol. 97r. Cazelles, Société politique, pp. 396-399, suggests that these measures 
against usurers were aimed partly at easing the nobles’ financial burden. However plausible, 
this view does not sufficiently consider the fact that confiscation of debts owed to usurers im- 
posed grave hardship on the debtors themselves (see Funk, “Lombard Debts”). These con- 
fiscations of the Lombards’ receivables forced debtors to make immediate repayment. Often 
this was extremely difficult, and some nobles who declared their debts in 1347 were unable to 
pay the crown anything for several years (AN JJ 81, no. 371). Philip VI needed money and 
certainly seems to have invoked the usury laws to gain access to sums currently in the hands 
of the nobility. . 

92 Among the documents which include copies of these commissions are AN JJ 16, no. 18; 
JJ 81, nos. 22, 335. 

93 A few examples will indicate the ratio of payment to the total declared: AN JJ 76, no. 160 
(60 1. paid to the crown out of 110 1. owed to a Lombard); no. 209 (124 1. paid out of 960 1. 
owed); no. 317 (40 1. paid out of 220 1. owed); no. 359 (one-quarter paid to the crown). From 
a slightly later date, we may notice AN JJ 82, no. 167 (133 florins finally paid out of 450 owed). 
See also the examples cited by Cazelles, Société politique, 279, note 12. Cazelles argues that the 
discrepancy between the amount paid and the total debt represents interest, which could ac- 
cumulate sizeably when a loan was not repaid for several years (ibid., 279, 397). Doubtless this 
is true in some cases; one debtor who finally promised the crown 80 écus in October, 1359 had 
incurred his debt to Lombards more than twenty years earlier (BN ms. fr. 6739, fol. lv). It is 
unlikely, however, that interest often amounted to half the total debt. In 1331 the crown as- 
sumed that three-quarters of a debt would be principal (above, note 68), in 1347 the principal 
was estimated at 60% of the total debt (below, note 96) and in 1356 the government was trying 
to collect two-thirds (Montpellier: Grand Chartrier, no. 2569 [E-8]). When as often happened, 
the crown accepted a payment of less than one-third of the total debt, it must have been taking 
less than the full principal in order.to collect quickly. 


58 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


sums, many of the payments recorded in these chancery registers were 
arranged rather quickly, in March or April of 1347.9 Persons permitted 
to pay less than the full principal in return for promptness would natur- 
ally be most anxious to gain written royal confirmation to protect them- 
selves against future demands that they pay the rest of the debt. The 
fact that so many finances were registered in the chancery is interesting 
in another way. Two-thirds of these transactions were concluded prior 
to the ordinance of 28 December 1347, and the overwhelming majority 
of these involved nobles.®%* This class, always solicitous of its rights, 
was in a better position to demand the protection that royal letters of 
confirmation afforded. At the same time, these entries offer further 
evidence that noble debtors were a particular target during most of 1347. 

When at last the king issued his ordinance of 28 December, he could 
only have been generalizing the measures previously enacted. Where 
earlier prosecutions may have been largely confined to a particular class 
of debtors or a particular group of Italian creditors, the confiscation was 
now applied throughout the kingdom. Seven years having elapsed since 
the last such confiscation, the government expected to gain an extremely 
large sum. The ordinance would be renewed by John II in 1350 and 
1353.°° The continuing exactions represent the most sustained action 
against usurious loans thus far attempted in France. At the time the 
ordinance was issued, the Estates General had just been in session. This 
assembly, which demanded changes in the royal administration and in 
the coinage but also promised a sizeable subsidy to the crown, must have 
agreed to the forthcoming enactment on Lombard debts.°” Such ac- 


4 Of the payments so registered during the years 1347 and 1348, about half the entries deal 
with full or partial payment prior to the end of April, 1347. The twenty-six entries for this 
period found in AN JJ 76 have been cited above, note 86. Others are AN JJ 68, nos. 160, 262, 
339, 343; JJ 77, nos. 140, 215, 225, 298, 428; and JJ 81, nos. 22, 88. 

% Transactions involving noble debtors, for the year 1347 only, are AN JJ 76, nos. 72, 78, 
80, 82, 86, 90, 103, 123, 124, 132, 144, 146, 149-151, 157, 160, 184, 192, 207, 209, 234, 312, 317, 
357, 359, 402-405; JJ 77, nos. 140, 142, 149, 175, 215, 225, 309; and JJ 81, nos. 88, 455. The 
numbers of transactions registered in the Trésor des chartes dropped sharply after 1347, but 
nobles continued to be prominent among those debtors who made compositions with the crown 
in 1348 (AN JJ 76, nos. 3, 19, 242; JJ 77, nos. 170, 174, 198, 232,242; JJ 81,n0.435) and in 
subsequent years (AN JJ 81, no. 371; JJ 84, nos. 274, 389). In all, about seventy transactions 
were registered at the chancery in 1347-48. In perhaps fifteen cases the social class of the debtor 
is not clear, but where it can be determined, the vast majority were nobles. ; 

96 The government estimated that outstanding debts totalled two million pounds of which 
the principal was 1,200,000 pounds (Funk, Lombard Debts, 52, citing Ord., 2, 418-420). For 
John II’s renewals of the ordinance see Ord., 2, 523-524; IV, pp. 80-82; AN P 2292, pp. 479-482. 

9? On these Estates and their significance see Henneman, “Black Death”; and Cazelles, 
Société politique, 216-229. The sources dealing with the tax grants of 1347-48 do not mention 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 39 


quiescence was in sharp contrast to the opposition which later assemblies 
would express. 

Yet already, in 1347, documents indicate that the measures against 
usurers created hardships when they were applied. When some Italians 
presented a royal charter which they hoped would protect their assets 
from seizure, the king’s council decided that it was not valid.°* In August, 
the juge mage of Beaucaire ordered cancellation of all usurious contracts 
entered into by poor people during a recent grain shortage.°® This local 
measure offers further evidence that a general cancellation of usurious 
contracts had not been ordered earlier in the year. Debtors affected by 
the enactments of February and March were particularly embarrassed 
if their income was seasonal in character. Those deriving their wealth 
from viniculture had to be granted a delay, paying half the money on 
1 October and half on 2 February 1348, but other persons were expected 
to pay immediately That some preferred secret arrangements with 
their Italian creditors is suggested by the stern injunction in the De- 
cember ordinance that nobody “compose” with the Lombards.'" 

In the years after 1348 the collection of Lombard debts continued,! 
but by the middle 1350’s there began to be serious opposition. The 
Estates of 1355 were hostile to the methods of royal commissioners and 
imposed a limitation on the measures against debtors.’ The growing 
opposition from this time onwards has been well documented by A. L. 
Funk, who has pointed out the hardships suffered by debtors,’ and has 
suggested an additional reason for the discontent, namely the fact that 
the proceeds from this tax were diverted from the treasury to the king’s 


Lombard debts but the ordinance of 28 December must have been issued with the knowledge 
and concurrence of the assembly. It is unknown how such concurrence may have been obtained 
but perhaps a factor was the attitude of the bourgeoisie, whose influence, in Cazelles’ opinion, 
was strong in this assembly. 

98 AN P 2292, pp. 23-25; BN ms. fr. 9146, fol. 96r-v. 

99 AD Hérault A 4, fols. 248-249. 

100 NB NAF 7606, fols. 457-458. In practice, other exceptions were permitted, as in the 
case of a woman who was allowed to continue using for one year some land which had been 
seized for a debt owed to a Lombard (Furgeot, Parl. Paris, 2, no. 8778). 

101 Ord., 2, 418-420. Cf. Montpellier: Grand Chartrier, no. 2585 (E-8). 

102 For 1349-50 there are twenty-nine entries in 71) Ph. VI between nos. 2473 and. 5052. 
For 1353, see Moranvillé, “Extrait ...,” BEC, 1888, p. 199. Transactions with debtors re- 
corded in the chancery registers include AN JJ 76, nos. 3, 18-20, 70, and 242; JJ 77, nos. 170, 
174, 198, 209, 232, 242, 260, 288; JJ 78, nos. 173, 182, 290, 221; JJ 80, no. 546; JJ 81, nos. 22 
114, 121, 157, 335, 371, 435, 856; JJ 84, nos. 274, 289; JJ 85, no. 153; JJ 89, no. 145bis. A 
number of these were late payments or final installments of debts declared in 1347-48, 

103 Funk, “Lombatd Debts,” 54; Ord., 3, 19-37, art. 17. 

104 Funk, “Lombard Debts,” 53-55. 


40 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


household accounts. The alleged wasteful luxury of the royal family 
met with increasing criticism from the Estates in the later 1350’s.19 

Of the assemblies in this period, the Estates of early 1357 were pro- 
bably most strongly under the influence of the king’s more radical 
opponents, Robert le Coq and Etienne Marcel. The great March ordin- 
ance issued at the behest of this assembly included a brief suspension of 
collection of the debts owed to Lombards.!°* No further action occurred 
until a year later when the Estates succeeded in obtaining an end to all 
collections.°” Not long after this order the Dauphin escaped the tutelage 
of the hostile Estates and convened a more friendly assembly of his own 
at Compiégne.!°S Meeting in May, 1358, this body gave its support to 
the Dauphin, but among the reforms promised in return was the per- 
manent recall of the commissioners assigned to collect from debtors.1% 
Thus two assemblies in the same year, one unfriendly to the crown and 
the other friendly, had each indicated opposition to the royal confiscation 
of debts. Between them they had induced the Dauphin to halt pro- 
ceedings which had been underway for over eleven years, an unusually 
long period. 

The enactments of 1358 should have been the end of the matter, and 
indeed one is tempted to question how much remained to be squeezed 
from the unfortunate debtors. It nevertheless appears that by 1362 the 
collections were again in progress. On 5 October 1362, Jean de Ram- 
pillon was named receiver general of Jinances payable to the crown by 
reason of debts owed to Lombards." There is no evidence that any new 
seizure of debts had been ordered and among Rampillon’s responsibilities 
was the collection of finances agreed to in 1356 and 1357 but never paid. 
In short, his mission seems to have been a continuation of the same 
exaction inaugurated in 1347. His account, rendered in September, 
1363, begins with 182 entries concerning finances made in 1356-57. Their 
total value far exceeded the new finances belonging to 1362-63,™ 


105 Thid., 53 and note 15. 

106 Jbid., 54-55. This suspension (Ord., 3, 124-126, art. 50) was until 17 April. 

107 Funk, “Lombard Debts,” 55. 

108 Delachenal, Charles V, 1, 388 £f. 

109 Funk, “Lombard Debts,” 55. Following the assembly an ordinance of twenty-eight 
articles was issued (Ord., 3, 219-232). Of these Art. 7 recalled the commissioners on the debtors 
of Lombards while art. 8 recalled the réformateurs concerned with usury in general. 

ΤῸ BN ms. fr. 6739, fol. Ir-v. Another reference to renewed activity by commissioners on 
this matter is AN P 2294, p. 461. 

ἯΙ Ibid. fols. lv-15v, 41r. Of the finances dating back to 1356-57, 171 debtors finally paid 
4193 céus, while twenty-one others paid small amounts in various currencies. These receipts 
came to nearly five times the total collected from new Finances of 1362-63. Evidently there re- 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 41 


There is no clear evidence as to why (or when) the matter of Lombard 
debts was reopened. Doubtless the action came after the treaty of Bré- 
tigny and concerned in some way the ransom of John II. In 1360, when 
a large down payment on the ransom was being collected hurriedly, the 
crown squeezed a large sum from Jews in the kingdom and may possibly 
have resumed collection of debts to usurers at the same time."? Sub- 
sequently a sweeping fiscal ordinance stabilized the coinage and esta- 
blished certain regular taxes aimed at meeting the ransom payments.” 
This ordinance cancelled all other taxes, but in 1362 the king declared 
that such cancellation did not extend to unpaid arrears of former taxes. 
It is likely that sums still outstanding from debtors were included among 
these arrears, for Jean de Rampillon was commissioned later in the same 
year and collected mainly sums that had been promised in the 1350's. 

Opposition, however, had by no means diminished, and in the fall of 
1363 the crown again cancelled its action against debtors. This order 
was appended as an extra article to an ordinance dealing primarily with 
Jews, and it was apparently not executed.45 Within weeks a growing 
wave of protest against the continued collection of debts led John IT to 
issue a special ordinance repeating the earlier command and enlarging 
upon it. It was this document which specifically stated that the action 
being taken against debtors proceeded from an arrét of the Parlement on 
6 December 1347.:5 After sixteen years the great confiscation was finally 
ended, although one last exception was made on 5 December 1363. 
Some of the revenue from this tax had been assigned to the duchess of 
Normandy and it was stipulated that compositions previously made with 
her representatives must still be honored.1” 


" 
OR 


Up to 1314 the Italians in France had been very lightly taxed. The 
1 d./l. botte aux Lombards was hardly burdensome, even though a higher 


mained little for the government to extort. Two Italians who had already had to pay 30,000 
florins were excused in February, 1363, from paying a small remaining debt (AN JJ 93, no. 162). 

118 The Dauphin’s measures regarding Jews were confirmed by John I in a series of ordi- 
nances issued in March, 1361 (AN JJ 89, no. 663-666). 

118 Ord., 3, 433 ff. (5 December, 1360). 

14 AN P 2294, pp. 303-304 (5 March, 1362). 

115 AN JJ 95, no. 29; AN P 2294, pp. 417-420; BN NAF 7612, fols. 332 ff. 

116 Ord., 3, 645 (cited above, note 82). 

1? Qrd., 3, 647. This assignment to the duchess of Normandy had been in effect at least 
since 1360 (AN PP 117, pp. 808-809). 


42 J. B. HENNEMAN, JR. 


rate was instituted outside those regions where the Italians had privi- 
leges. Wool exports were subject to licenses and money-lenders were 
vulnerable to massive fines when they violated the usury laws. In general, 
however, Philip IV’s fiscal policy cannot have posed a serious impediment 
to business activity, nor can the Italians have furnished a very large pro- 
portion of the crown’s extraordinary revenue. . 

Towards the end of Philip’s reign, however, there arose military, 
fiscal and political problems which would afflict the monarchy for several 
decades and necessitate various fiscal expedients. These included ex- 
pansion of the customs levies, increases in the boite aux Lombards, and 
establishment of the 5° property tax. 

The large extortions directed against Italian money-lenders were the 
most spectacular of all the royal fiscal expedients in this eraof makeshift 
financing. They were also by far the most serious from the point of view 
of the Italians themselves. The circumstances of these extortions varied. 
Those of 1311 and 1331 were peacetime measures adopted when no war 
subsidies were available. Those of 1325 and 1337 occurred at the be- 
ginnings of wars, when subsidies were under negotiation but were en- 
countering the resistance which always seemed to occur after several 
years of peace. Those of 1340 and 1347 coincided with the English sieges 
of Tournai and Calais respectively, when a particularly costly French 
military effort was demanded. 

These changing circumstances are interesting because they reveal 
the conditions under which the crown might act against the Italians. 
The fundamental difference among the large extortions, however, in- 
volved their scope. Prior to 1330, the government periodically forced 
usurers to pay a large sum, perhaps one or two hundred thousand pounds 
as a fine. Thereafter, however, the extortions became confiscations of 
capital assets, a vastly more serious matter, involving (in 1347) over 
a million pounds, On at least two occasions (1331 and 1347) these seizures 
were superimposed upon the traditional large fine. 

The failure of Frenchmen, especially the nobles, to accept a tax burden 
which would support the cost of war and government in the fourteenth 
century may have forced Philip VI to pursue his agressive policy to- 
wards the Italians. It was nevertheless an unfortunate policy from the 
political, fiscal, and economic point of view. Confiscation of usurious 
debts seriously embarrassed the debtor classes, including politically in- 
fluential nobles and municipal governments who could no longer regard 
enforcement of the usury laws as a reform. Periodic prosecution of 
“Lombard usurers,” once a politically safe source of emergency funds 
for the crown, now aroused hostility and was denounced by the Estates. 
As the extortion policy was becoming a political liability it was also 


TAXATION OF ITALIANS BY THE FRENCH CROWN 43 


losing value as a fiscal device because of excessive exploitation. No 
longer content with occasional fines, the king after 1330 began confiscat- 
ing the capital which had made those fines possible. The government 
thus was sacrificing the long-term fiscal possibilities afforded by illegal 
money-lending in order to realize a large short-term gain. This policy 
must also have injured the financial position of many royal subjects by 
seriously restricting credit at a time of declining purchasing power and 
economic contraction. 

An Italian merchant residing at the Champagne fairs in 1311 was 
subject to the extremely small tax of 1 d./l. on each of his transactions, 
but was otherwise free of taxation unless he exported wool. Twenty 
years later a merchant similarly situated would have to pay 1 1/2 d./L. 
on each domestic transaction, 4 d./]. on the value of goods exported, 
and a 5% annual property tax to secure bourgeois privileges. His tax 
burden had thus increased significantly but was still not extremely heavy 
and would remain stable during the next three decades, despite the 
increasing fiscal difficulties of the monarchy. For money-lenders, how- 
ever, it was a different matter, particularly after the disastrous confiscations 
of receivables began in 1331. The prolonged extortion of 1347-63, 
coinciding with the Black Death and serious military and political dis- 
turbances in France, must have destroyed the money-lending business 
of most Lombards in the kingdom.48 We can thus conclude that French 
fiscal policy in this period proved harrassing but not crippling to the 
Italians as merchants, while it dealt a severe blow to those whose business 
was the lending of money, as well as to their customers. 


McMaster University. 


118 Tn this connection it is interesting that Wolff, in studying Toulouse in the period after 
1350, found no Lombards. Money-lending activities in that town were in the hands of Jews 
and domestic money-changers. See P. Wolff, Commerces et marchands de Toulouse (vers 1350 - 
vers 1450) (Paris, 1954), 397. 


Henry IV, the Commons and Taxation 


ALAN ROGERS 


es controversies between the king and his parliaments during the reign 
of Henry IV have long been recognised as some of the most severe of 
all those of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The record in itself is im- 
pressive for a short period of thirteen and a half years. In 1401 the commons 
conducted an extreme attack on the king’s administration especially 
his household, and criticised his liberality.1 In 1402, further criticisms of 
excessive royal generosity were heard from the commons. In 1404, at the 
insistence of the lower house, the king dismissed a number of members from 
the royal households, and the parliamentary lay subsidy was placed in the 
hands of specially appointed war treasurers.. The breakdown in national 
finances which this arrangement created resulted in a further parliament 
later in the same year when modifications more favourable to the king were 
made, but criticism was still very strong. In 1406, an unprecedentedly 
long parliamentary session witnessed the commons resisting all demands of 
the king for a grant until certain reforms had been made in the council 
and administration. In 1407, there were severe criticisms of the king’s 
financial burdens and impecuniosity, while as late as 1410 the commons 
were vociferous in their complaints. At no other period, except perhaps 
during Richard II’s minority, was there such persistent criticism from 
parliament as bitter as in these early years of the fifteenth century.? 

The causes of this prolonged outburst of opposition are not hard to 
find. Henry IV’s frequent recourse to parliament for financial aid may be 
considered one of the major contributing factors. Political considerations 
may have played their part in the summons of the 1401 parliament,? but 


1 Roi{uli] Parl[iamentorum] (London, Record Commission, 1767-77), 3, 471, 478; cf A. L. 
Brown, “Commons and Council in Reign of Henry IV,” English Historical Review, 79 (1964), 2-9. 

2 Some further evidence may be drawn from the parliamentary sessions. In 9 years, 1377- 
1386, 14 (highly critical) parliaments were held at an average length of 37 days; the average 
per year was 57 days. In 10 years, 1388-98, 10 parliaments were held, averaging 35 days per 
parliament and per year. In 12 years, 1399-1411, only 8 parliaments were held, but they averaged 
68 days each, a yearly average of 45 days. In other words, the effect of fewer but longer parlia- 
ments was almost as great as during the early years of Richard II’s reign. 

3 TI have dealt with this crisis in detail in “The Political Crisis of 1401,” Nottingham Medieval 
Studies, 12 (1968), 85-96. 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 45 


even in this case and in all the other summons of parliaments during the 
reign the economic motive predominated. Henry’s pressing need for 
money is well known. The charges on his government were excessively 
heavy, recurrent and concurrent; the second parliament of 1404 when 
granting a subsidy spoke of the king’s expenses in the east and west Marches 
of Scotland, in Wales and in Ireland, at sea and at Calais, in resisting the 
alliance of the Welsh, Scots, French and Bretons, in recovering Guienne, 
and generally in the defence of the realm. Other burdens included the 
costs of the usurpation of Richard II’s throne, both in the initial expenses 
and in the importunity of Henry of Bolingbroke’s supporters.> At the same 
time England was faced with a severe short-term cut-back in the wool 
trade,* perhaps caused by the unsettled conditions following the revolution 
of 1399. The yield thus from the customs seems to have been substantially 
reduced, although only temporarily. A further contributory factor was 
apparently a serious loss in efficiency in revenue collecting which accounted 
for a considerable decline in revenue from some sources.’ But above all, 
the revolution must have given a great shock to the government’s credit; 
and in circumstances like these, the medieval system of exchequer finance, 
based as it was so heavily on assignment and thus on credit, was unable to 
help. There are clear indications in the king’s repeated demands for 
money and in the increasing complaints about non-payment for royal 
purveyance® that what the king needed was ready cash; and the medieval 


4 Rot. Parl., 3, 546. 

5 Rot. Parl., 3, 454. For initial expenses of about £11,000, borne by the wardrobe, see P[ublic] 
R[ecord] Offfice], Exch. LTR, Memoranda Rolls, E368/175, Status et Visus, Pasche m.11; 
for the rewards of the Percies after 1399, see J. M. W. Bean, “Henry IV and the Percies,” History, 
44 (1959), 212-227. 

6 The figures in the various tables in M. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman, England’s Export 
Trade, 1275-1547 (Oxford, 1963), show something of the extent of this; cf. also Rot. Parl., 3, 
523, where the commons alleged that the customs were si sodeynment amesnusez (1404); but this 
charge was made as early as January 1391, ibid., 3, 284. 

7 A. Steel, Receipt of the Exchequer (Cambridge, 1954), 107. Because less revenue was passing 
through the Exchequer of Receipt does not of course necessarily mean that less was being col- 
lected. The receipt rolls only indicate the size of exchequer business; more could be drained 
away at source. Nevertheless, there is other evidence for the “dislocation” at this time. The 
average yield of the duchy of Lancaster under Henry IV was less than £1500 p.a.; under Henry V 
it was over £3000 p.a., PRO, DL28/4/1-8; Blulletin af the] I[nstitute of] H[istorical] R[esearch], 
24 (1951), 142. Comparisons of the lay subsidies in 1403 and 1413 reveal the same point, PRO, 
Exchequer of Receipt, Receipt Rolls, E401/627, 630, 631, 658, 660, and below, note 37. 

8 Rot. Parl., 3, 473, 507, 587, 592, 609, etc.; Ann[ales Henrici] (Rolls Series, London, 1866), 
337, 388; Eullogium Historiarum] (Rolls Series, London, 1863), 3, 389, 405; C. M. Fraser, “Some 
Durham Documents,” B.I.H.R., 34 (1961), 194, 198; Cal[endar of] Paifent] Rolls, 1409-13, 226, 
318, etc. 


46 A. ROGERS 


exchequer, which was always primarily an accounting department, was 
never geared to cope with such demands over a sustained period. Henry 
to a large extent created his own financial problems. _ 

Henry IV’s costs were thus very high, while his revenue, especially in 
cash, was low. His constant demands for money thus necessitated frequent 
parliaments. Despite the fact that (at least theoretically) the French war 
was temporarily in abeyance, the king’s requests for taxes, both lay and 
clerical, were very heavy, as heavy in fact as during the years of the active 
prosecution of the war. The frequent collection of the lay subsidies and 
the resulting unpopularity of the government led parliament to seek new 
ways of levying subsidies, the land and income taxes of 1404 and 1411.9 

Nevertheless, the king’s reiterated demands for money, heavy as they 
were, cannot provide a full answer to the problem of the intransigence of 
the commons under Henry IV. It is clear that parliament at this time was 
undergoing certain changes. After 1401, it was no longer the great arena in 
which the controversies between the king and rival factions of magnates 
were fought out, as in the 1380’s and the 1390’s.1° Rather the emphasis 
lies on the commons, whose complaints of the financial maladministration 
of the realm, recurrent throughout the fourteenth century, now rose to a 
climax. Left leaderless bymagnate faction and rebellion outside parliament, 
more dependant than at any other time upon themselves, the commons 
showed a new burst of energy and initiative which led Stubbs to speak of 
the “Lancastrian experiment.” Most of their venom was directed against 
the excessive costs of government accompanied by too-frequent demands 
for taxes and their maladministration, and at the heart of the struggle lay 
the king’s household. 

The significance of these struggles has not been clearly recognised. 
Stubbs said of them that “the extravagance of the court was really only a 
minor cause of public distress;” while more recently J. E. A. Jolliffe 
dismissed them as “repeated dissensions upon minor issues, mainly upon the 
spending of the revenue and especially that part of it which goes for the 
royal household.” But the scale of the controversy was scarcely minor; it 


® Rot. Parl., 3, 546-7, 635. Cf. also the king’s attempts to raise other taxes from the lords in 
1400, Plroceedings and] O[rdinances of the] Plrivy] Council], ed. N. H. Nicolas (London, 1834-37), 
1, 104; and 1405, Hisi[oria] Angl[icana] (Rolls Series, London, 1864), 2, 268. 

10 The struggles between the prince of Wales’ faction and the court party at the end of the 
reign were not conducted in parliament to any large extent. 

il W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England (5th ed., Oxford, 1896), 3, 5. The minority 
of Richard II, however, provides some close parallels of persistent commons’ criticism, as also 
do, to some extent, the years 1339-48 and, of course, 1371-76. 

12 J. E. A. Jolliffe, Constitutional History of Medieval England (London, 1954), 432; Stubbs, op. 
cit., 2, 588. Elsewhere he says (ibid. 2, 584), “it remains a most puzzling fact that the household 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 47 


is clear that a major constitutional struggle was in progress. The parliamen- 
tary disputes in the early years of the fifteenth century can only be explained 
satisfactorily on the assumption that the commons were aware that some 
vital issue was at stake. Nor is that issue hard to find: it was precisely over 
the use to which parliamentary taxation was to be put. 

To the commons, parliamentary taxation was an exceptional grant, 
made in the king’s great necessity with the consent of his subjects, and as 
such was to be expended on those purposes for which it had been granted. 
Here lay the distinction between ordinary revenue (whether regular or 
casual) and extraordinary revenue. No-one denied the king’s right in 
national emergencies to demand money from his subjects; and, like other 
forms of assistance, such as loans, benevolences and military service, it was 
the duty of the subject to respond to this exercise of the royal prerogative.'® 

Such a demand had to be justified, the emergency agreed with parlia- 
ment, and this was usually treated as a question of defence involving foreign 
war. Part of the justification, in the eyes of parliament, was the traditio- 
nal duty of the king to go in person to the defence of the realm. Both king 
and subjects had mutual responsibilities in time of emergency — the one 
to lead, the other to support. This royal obligation formed part of the 
pronunciation explaining the reasons for the summons of the parliament 
and the demand for taxation on several occasions throughout the period. 
In 1384 and again in 1385 the king promised personaliter se transferre. In 
1386 the king avoit pris purpos de passer la Meer en propre persone ove son Roiale 
poair a grever et guerroier ses Einemys es parties de dela; while in 1395 parliament 
was called to consider the Passage du Roi vers Irland. Such journeys might 
be for waging war or for making peace. Thus the commons in making grants 
specified on occasion that these were made on condition that the king 
went in person abroad. In January 1404 the king urged that he had fre- 
quently put himself in peril on behalf of the nation, and again in 1407, en 
toutz cases de necessitee il voet travailler en sa propre persone> It was this royal 


outlay of the sovereign was the point which ... formed the ‘subject of national outcry and dis- 
content.” 

18. Ἐς F. Jacob, Fifieenth Century (Oxford, 1961), 77-8; G. L. Harriss, “Aids, Loans and Bene- 
volences,” Historical Journal, 6 (1963), 1-19. Cf. Rot. Parl., 3, 184 (1384): quilibet de eodem Regno 
animum tenetur assumere ferventiorem eidem Domino Regi in tanta Regni et Reipublice Necessitate, cum 
corpore et bonis libentius adjuvare cum meliorem sibi nequeat impendere responsuram. Refusal could only 
be on the grounds that it would destroy the subjects’ estate by adding to extreme poverty; see 
Harriss, Historical Journal, 6 (1963), 17. Cf. Rot. Parl., 2, 364 (1377). 

14 G. L. Harriss, “Parliamentary Taxation and the Origins of ‘Appropriation of Supply in 
England, 1207-1340,” Recueils de la Société Fean Bodin pour 1 Histoire comparative des Institutions, 
vol. 24 (1966), 165-179. 

18 Rot. Parl., 3, 184, 203, 215, 285-6, 329, 454, 608. 


48 A. ROGERS 


responsibility which gave the commons a voice in detailed arrangements 
for the defence of the realm. 

Once however the emergency had been established and the royal res- 
ponsibility agreed, the aim of the commons was to ensure that the aid 
granted was not appropriated to other uses. The constant emphasis both 
in and out of parliament throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 
that the king was “to live of his own” was more than a complaint against 
frequent taxes; it was also a demand that parliamentary taxes should not 
be diverted from their primary purpose, the extraordinary needs of the 
realm, mainly war and defence.1? Ordinary revenue was to be devoted to the 
ordinary costs of the royal government and household; any taxes granted 
by the laity in parliament or the clergy in convocation were to be devoted 
to their special purposes. On occasion it could be agreed that the king 
might need an occasional aid to supplement his ordinary revenue; in 1390, 
one quarter of the parliamentary wool customs was apparently appropriat- 
ed to the current needs of the king, while the rest was devoted to the war.18 
Nevertheless the climate of opinion was firmly that taxes in parliament were 
exceptional grants for exceptional purposes and were to be used for such 
purposes alone. Throughout these two centuries, parliament was very 
insistent that taxes which they granted should be used only to meet the 
emergency for which they had been granted: “ΕἸ si les Guerres (said the 
commons in 1373) cessont en le second an, touz les Grauntz et Charges avant nomez 
sotent annullez.”+9 

The consistent efforts of parliament to prevent misappropriation of 
supplies must be distinguished from the question of redress of grievances 


16 As early as 1332, Rot. Parl., 2, 66; cf. G. L. Harriss, “The Commons Petitions of 1340,” 
English Historical Review, 78 (1963), 647. 
17 Cf, e.g., Hoccleve, Regement of Princes (Early English Text Soc., 72, 1897), 159: 
Naght speke I ageyn eides uttirly, 
In sum cas they ben good and necessarie; 
But whan they goon to custumablely, 
The peple it makith for to curse and warie: 
And if they ben despended in contrarie 
Of that they graunted of the peple were, 
The more grucchen they the cost to bere. 
Rot. Parl., 3, 419, speaks of the king living of his own and not taxing his people; this is part 
of the process of deposition against Richard II. 
18 The evidence for this comes from Walsingham (Hist. Angl., 2, 196), who conflates the two 
parliaments of this year. There is no sign in Rot. Parl., 2, 262-3, 279. 
19 Rot. Parl., 2, 317; cf. also ibid., 2, 128, 183 (1340-1), 252: que les Deniers sourdantz de meisme 
le Subside soient sauvement gardez pur la dite Guerre, sanz ceo gils soient mys en autre oeps (1353), 364 


(1377); 8, 7 (1877), 56 (1379), 151 (1383), 262-3 (Jan. 1390). 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 49 


before grants were made. In this, parliament was attempting to use its 
powers of consent to taxation as a weapon to gain new ground; and during 
the early years of the fifteenth century, no advance was made in this respect. 
In 1401, the king sharply threw out a demand for redress before supplies,”° 
and nothing further was heard of it for the rest of the reign. Nor is the 
matter clarified by the use of the term “appropriation of supplies.”*t The 
commons were rarely able to make grants successfully with conditions 
attached to them, unless the conditions were offered first by the king.” 
Rather they were seeking some assurances that the taxes to which they 
assented would be expended on the objects for which they had been request- 
ed, Their aim was to prevent misappropriation rather than to make con- 
ditions. 

This struggle was not of course unique to England; it was also a feature 
of contemporary French politics.2* Nor as we have seen was it a new 
phenomenon in English politics at the beginning of the fifteenth century. 
Indeed, from 1340 onwards, the clamour of the commons against misap- 
propriation had grown increasingly insistent. The minority of Richard II 
was a time of exceptional parliamentary activity.™ But the peace policy 
of Richard II resulted in a greater urgency in the commons’ demands that 
parliamentary taxes were granted for extraordinary purposes only. By 
means of a series of truces, England was at peace with France from 1389 
until 1415;25 nevertheless the king’s demands for taxation for the defence of 


29 Rot. Parl., 3, 458. The judges in 1387 condemned redress of grievances, ibid., 3, 233. For 
earlier examples, see ibid., 1, 443-5 (1309); 2, 201 (1348), etc. 

21 Dr. Harriss, of. cit. in note 14, retains the term “appropriation,” but qualifies it by speak- 
ing of “appropriation not on the initiative of the estates who granted the aid, but by the crown 
as an essential part of its justification of the necessity,” p. 172. Since this is not how the term 
is generally understood, I prefer to abandon it altogether. I regret that I was unable to see 
Dr. Harriss’ valuable paper until this article was completed. 

22 Rot. Parl., 2, 131, 133-4; 3, 151, 279; 4, 276; cf. 301. The case of 1348 (ibid., 2, 148) when 
the commons attached the condition (among others) that the king should either win the war 
or make peace is one exception; it amounts to a plea to end taxation by spending the grants 
effectively. 

38 Cf P. S. Lewis, “France in the Fifteenth Century,” Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. 
J. R. Hale, J. R. L. Highfield and B. Smalley (London, 1965), 281-2. The discussion in D. Hay, 
Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London, 1966), 100-111, 159-162, is valuable. 
See E. Perroy, Hundred Years War (London, 1951), 220-4, 232-3, etc. 

24 See, e.g. Stubbs, Constit. Hist., 2, 596; T. F. Tout, Chapters in English Administrative History 
(Manchester, 1920-33), 3, 333-394. Some of the evidence lies off the parliament roll: thus in 
1384 the commons made the grant conditional upon a personal royal campaign to France, 
Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden (Rolls Series, London, 1886), 9, 52; cf. Rot. Parl., 3, 185. 

25 There was of course persistent fighting, especially in the reign of Henry, e.g. in Gascony 
from 1405-7, and more generally, 1411-12, caused by constant breaches of the truce. See 
Perroy, op. cit., 217-8, 230-1. 


50 A. ROGERS 


the realm and for its common profit persisted. The result was that these 
years of Anglo-French rapprochement saw a critical stage in the relations 
between king and commons. 

The years 1389-97 have traditionally been regarded as a period of har- 
mony between king and parliament.2* But on closer examination it is clear 
that relations were not always peaceful. In March 1390, the commons 
granted the customs for the defence of the realm merely for the following 
nine months; their demand que un Tresorer soit ordeine en cest present Parle- 
ment pur garder les ditz Subsides a loeps de Guerres et gils ne soient despenduz mes 
tant soulement en la Defense du Roialme must be read in the light of the changes 
in the existing officers which took place at this time rather than as a demand 
for a special appointment. More important was the commons’ demand 
que y soit un Contrerollour de contreroller les ditz Despenses, come ils voillent respondre 
a proschein Parlement2” Later in the same year parliament was called to 
renew the customs and to make a grant in case the negotiations with 
Scotland and France failed. Only the customs were renewed (for three 
years), en eide de Defense et Salvation du Roialme... sanz estre despenduz en autre 
condition. A proviso was attached that the Staple was to be removed to 
England by 9 January 1391 and was to be kept there during the three years; 
if not, gadonges mesmes les Subsides cessent... sanz james delors estre levez. In 
November 1391, when one and a half lay subsidies were granted, further 
conditions were attached: in reply to the king’s assurances of good govern- 
ment, one half subsidy was granted pur honorer son Estat et viage en sa propre 
persone en les parties de France pur les Trewes ou Final Pees affermer...; if the king 
did not go in person, the subsidy demurgent en la garde de Tresorer dengleterre.. 
The whole subsidy was then granted pur son Roial Viage, any surplus to be 
used for the defence of the realm, solone les hautes sens et discretion de Roi... 
et des Seignurs de son Counseill sanz estre despenduz en autre oeps. If the king did 
not go, or if peace or a truce was concluded, it was not to be levied; the 
treasurer of England was to be charged in parliament by the king himself 
that the whole grant was not to be spent in any other way at all, come il 
vorra respondre a la Commune de Roialme de Empeschement de ceo en proschein 
Parlement. Et que ce soit entre de recorde en Roulle de Parlement. In January 1393, 
in support of a plea for money, whether the land had war, truce or peace, 
the king promised further good government so as to discharge the commons 


26 Stubbs, of. cit., 2, 506-13; Tout, op. cit., 3, 473-9; A. Steel, Richard IT (Cambridge, 1948), 
180-216. 

27 Rot. Parl., 3, 262-3; Tout, op. cit., 3, 460; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1391-6, 9. Cf. note 18 above. 
The commons were clearly aware on this occasion that such a short-term grant would necessi- 
tate another summons of parliament. For special war treasurers in 1385, see Rot. Parl., 3, 204, 
apparently connected with Gaunt’s Spanish journey. 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 51 


from impositions or tallages in time to come; therefore entrelessantz toutes 
maneres conditions, the commons granted the customs for a further three years, 
provided that part of the tunnage and poundage soit rebatuz if a truce or 
peace were made and the king did not go overseas or to Scotland in person. 
Half a lay subsidy was granted for defence ef pur les Coustages et Charges du 
Roi et du Roialme et pur honorer la persone du Roi. If the king proposed firmly 
to go to Ireland pur y guerrer et conquerre ses Enemys, a further half subsidy 
was to become due; but if the king did not go, then this half was to re- 
main with the treasurer of England, to be answered for by him as he 
was charged in parliament. Finally, if open war broke out with France 
and the king led an expedition to France or Scotland, then that subsidy in 
the treasury might be used together with a third half subsidy to be raised ; 
but if the king did not go in person, then the third half subsidy was not to be 
levied. All these conditions were to be enrolled on the parliament roll. 
In January 1394, the increased rates of tunnage and poundage were con- 
firmed, on condition that if peace were made, the increases were to be re- 
moved within fifteen days. The commons further agreed that the last of 
the half subsidies agreed in the previous year soit mys en disposition de... 
Roi et de son Conseill pur estre despenduz sur les busoigns du Roialme, soit il Pees, 
Trieves ou Guerre. In January 1395, two half subsidies were granted for the 
Irish expedition, with safeguards against future exactions for Irish affairs; 
this was not to become a precedent. In January 1397, after the humiliation 
of the commons in the Haxey affair, the wool customs were renewed for a 
further five years and the tunnage and poundage for three years subject to 
the condition that they were not to be levied thereafter without the authority 
of parliament.”* 

This activity of the commons cannot be regarded as merely formal, an 
appeasement by the commons of their constituents; the insistence on ren- 
dering account in the next parliament, although in fact never apparently 
enforced, is evidence that the commons regarded that body as the guardian 
of the interests of the people. Thus all this activity throws into greater 
relief the parliamentary grant made to Richard IT at Shrewsbury early in 
1398—the customs for life and one and a half lay subsidies, without any con- 
ditions whatsoever.2® To obtain these favourable terms, the king had to 
intimidate parliament. The political importance of the commons is eviden- 
ced by Richard II’s efforts to overwhelm them in 1397-8. The political 
stature of the commons was increasing. 

It is with this background that the story of the struggles of Henry IV 


38. Rot, Parl., 3, 279, 285-6, 301-2, 314, 330, 340. 
29 Rot. Parl. 3, 368-9. 


59 A. ROGERS 


and his parliaments becomes intelligible. The king’s need for money was 
very great. Despite the technical peace, the reign was constantly disturbed 
by revolts and uprisings, by Scottish hostilities, as well as by the running 
sore of the Welsh rebellion. Henry faced not merely the normal burdens of 
government at a time of falling revenue but considerably increased demands 
for ready money to pay for the involuntary campaigns of the first nine years 
of the reign. And probably nearly as much as one half of the heavy costs 
of Henry’s campaigns was not incurred in war against foreign enemies. 
Thus continually the king had to justify to parliament his appeal for aid 
in terms which were at best marginal, at worst no longer customary. It is 
somewhat ironical that Henry was too uncertain of his position to ask 
parliament for aid for the only “foreign” war which he waged in person, 
against Scotland in 1400.9 The demands presented to parliament by the 
king’s servants in their opening speeches made great play of all sorts of 
military activities as justifying the summons of parliament and the granting 
of extraordinary aids. Herein lay the causes of the clash — the king’s 
recurrent needs no longer clearly fell into the category of “extraordinary” 
expenditure which had been worked out in the fourteenth century as 
justifying such taxes. Such taxes were being demanded more and more 
regularly. Nor were the commons satisfied that the taxes, once granted, 
were being used for the purposes for which they were given. The commons 
were in fact generous but at the same time they were deeply disturbed at 


what they considered was misappropriation of the supplies which they 
voted. 


μὰ 
* ok 


The evidence as to how in fact parliamentary taxes were being used 
during the early part of the reign is not easily available. There are some 
formal allocations of revenues for specific purposes. The customs, for 
instance, were more generally than not assigned for military purposes — to 
the Percies for the Marches of Scotland, or to Calais.* Nevertheless on 
occasion they continued to be used for annuities not associated with mili- 
tary ends, and the commons struggled to insist that these signs of royal 
favour which presumed on future parliamentary grants should be with- 
drawn; the practice however persisted throughout the reign.®? The customs 


20 P.O.P.C., 1, 104. 

31 Cal[endar of] Close Rolls, 1402-5, 107; “Calais sous les Anglais,” J. L. Kirby, Reoue du 
Nord, 37 (1955). 

82 Rot. Parl., 3, 457; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1401-5, 383; ibid., 1405-9, 411, 453-4, etc. 3; PRO, Customs 
Accounts, E122/8/10, etc. 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 53 


however lay on the periphery of the struggle; at the centre was the lay sub- 
sidy of the tenth (for towns and ancient royal demesne) and fifteenth (for 
rural England) which was the normal form of parliamentary subsidy de- 
manded and granted. 

An analysis of the exchequer assignments made on the lay subsidy granted 
by the parliament of September 1402 is instructive. The grant was made 
on 25 November 1402, of one tenth and fifteenth to be collected in three 
instalments, one half on 2 February 1403, a quarter on 24 June 1403 and 
the final quarter on 11 November 1404. The collectors were appointed on 
5 December 1402. The first assignments on the first half were made on 7 
December, while the first cash from this half was recorded on 15 January.® 
Guy Mone, bishop of St. Davids, was treasurer at the time of the grant, and 
the assignments made on the lay subsidy during his tenure of office (i.e. 
up to 9 September 1403) were as follows:* 


First half of tenth 


Military: (Thomas of Lancaster, George Dunbar earl of March, 
Sir Robert Umfraville, the earl of Westmorland and the duke 


of York for Gascony £1196.13.9. 
Household departments (mainly queen, £180) 268. 8.1. 
Fees and annuities (especially the justices) 207. 7.8. 
Repayment of loan (probably military) 100. 0.0. 
Second half, first payment: due 24 June; first assignment 1 March; no cash 
recorded.** 
Military (the earl of Westmorland, duke of York for Gascony) 320. 0. 0. 
Embassies 469. 5.0. 
Household departments (mainly wardrobe) 1592.14.0. 
Queen 179. 0.0. 


33 Rot. Parl., 3, 492-3; Calendar of] Fine Rolls, 1399-1405, 186-191; PRO, E401/627. An 
earlier assignment, under 13 November, on the first payment of the second half of the lay 
subsidy, anno quarto, is clearly a later insertion over an erasure; the grant had not been made 
by this date. The roll is difficult to interpret, as almost every entry has sol’, in addition to 
those with the more usual assignment marginals. Nor is the contemporary issue roll much 
help; for most of this term, the phrase fer assignacionem is dropped in favour of a statement of 
the source of the payment. We still do not know a great deal about the exchequer in the later 
middle ages, but it is clear that the marginals on the receipt rolls are often unreliable. See 
below, note 37. 

34 Drawn from PRO E401/627, 630, 631. The receipt roll for the Easter 1402 term (E401/ 
630) is not complete. 

35 The receipt roll ends on 30 May; some cash receipts may have been made after that 
date. 


54 : A. ROGERS 


Second half, second payment: due 11 November; first assignment 21 May; 
first cash recorded, 3 October.?¢ 


Creditor of household 105. 3. 10 
Justice’s fee 40. 0. 0. 


Under William lord Roos, treasurer from 9 September 1403, assignments 
on the second payment of the second half ran as follows: 


Military (earls of Westmorland and Rutland, Thomas of Lancaster, 


John of Lancaster) 2343. 8. 6. 
Loans repaid 90.14. 8. 
Household departments 899. 7. 9. 
Queen 896.15.12. 
Fees and annuities 322.15. 4. 


The figures are somewhat difficult to interpret.2? For instance some of 
the sums credited to William Loveney, keeper of the great wardrobe, were 
for debts within the offices of armourer and pavilioner and thus may be 
regarded as military expenditure. Nevertheless, it is still clear that a con- 
siderable portion of the lay subsidy was being expended by means of assign- 
ments on what might be classed “ordinary” costs of government. Of the 
cash payments, which formed the bulk of the recorded receipts from this lay 
subsidy, we can say nothing. Although there is some evidence that the 
exchequer kept cash funds appropriated to specific purposes, 8 regular notes 
to this effect are absent. 

This is not an isolated case. The wardrobe drew assignments on the lay 
subsidy in the Easter term 1401 amounting to £1238.8.11. Although 
this was only a small part of the total assignments received by the wardrobe 
in this term (£6131.9.4.), it was still clearly a large sum.* Throughout 


36 It was clearly being collected early, for it was not due until Martinmas (11 Nov.). At- 
tempts to prevent early collection were made in 1410, Rot. Parl., 3, 635. 

37 Some of the entries on E401/627, amounting to £698, are marked with the words sol and 
Elmeton. Although identical in form to assignment marginals on this roll, their true nature is 
revealed by the words later on the roll: In manibus Elmeton (an exchequer clerk). 

A comparison with Henry V’s first lay subsidy is instructive. Granted on 9 June 1413, Rot. 
Parl., 4, 6, specifically for defence, collectors for it were appointed on 5 July, Cal. Fine Rolls, 
1413-22, 25-9, and payments were due to commence on 11 Nov. On 14 and 23 November, 
the whole of the receipts consisted of cash from the lay subsidy, no other business being re- 
corded. Large cash receipts were recorded also on 9 December and thereafter the lay subsidy 
featured in the normal way among other receipts. Virtually no assignments are recorded on 
these rolls, and none at all on the lay subsidy, PRO, E401/658, 660. This may represent in- 
creased exchequer efficiency. 

38 Cf. PRO, E403/567, 13 July, payments by Henry Somer, an exchequer official from for- 
feited goods; ibid., 569, 4 and 13 Dec., temporalities of vacant sees administered by Henry Hare- 
burgh; etc. The demand for audit of accounts clearly implies separate funds in the exchequer. 

“9 PRO, E401/622; there is no contemporary issue roll to assess wardrobe receipts in cash. 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 55 


the whole reign, the wool customs and tunnage and poundage provided the 
bulk of the exchequer assignments tothe household; indeed, in 1401 thelatter 
customs were explicitly reserved for the household.*? After 1403 the queen 
regularly drew part of her dower of 10,000 marks from exchequer assign- 
ments, including the lay subsidy ; itmay well have been the size of the queen’s 
liveries from the lay subsidy which caused a good deal of the strong feeling 
among the commons in the parliament of January 1404.4 Until this parli- 
ament it would seem that Henry IV, in accordance with long established 
predecents, regarded every source of revenue as available forhis government. 
Very heavy assignments in favour of the wardrobe were drawn, for instance, 
from the clerical tenths in the years 1401 and 1402-4, a total of over £3000 
in the single term, Michaelmas 1403-4. It has been suggested, with regard 
to his use of seals, that Henry IV ruled his kingdom much as a magnate 
ruled his estates;#2 the same may have been true in the early stages of the 
reign with regard to the finances of the realm. In January 1404, he plea- 
ded that he needed parliamentary taxes as he did not wish to lose his royal 
estates. It is clear from the record of this same parliament that the king 
regarded les... Charges supporter pur lostell du Roy et autrement as well as the 
costs of the defence of the realm and the safety of the sea as adequate 
grounds for asking the commons for a parliamentary subsidy.4* And in 
1406, in a remarkable programme which was presented to parliament on his 
behalf, he requested for his own necessities an extra wool custom, a cloth 
subsidy and £5000 p.a. from the existing wool customs and tunnage and 
poundage which had been granted previously for the wars, notwithstanding 
any conditions attached to the subsidy at the time of its grant; any surplus 
was to be used for the war.“ Henry IV’s view of parliamentary taxation 
or of the “necessity” which justified it does not seem to have been the same 
as that of the commons. 


ἧς 
* 


The royal household lay at the heart of the struggle. It was the largest 
non-military spending department in the government. The problem under 
Henry IV was not one of the king seeking extra funds in order to develop 


40 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1399-1401, 489-90. Sources of assignments to the wardrobe are listed in 
a table below. : 

41 Cf. Fraser in B.LH.R., 34 (1961). Much of the attack was directed against the queen’. 
household. 

42 A. L. Brown, “Authorization of Letters under the Great Seal,”, B.I.H.R., 37 (1964), 154. 

43 EFul., 3, 399; Rot. Parl., 3, 523. 

44 P.O.P.C., 1, 283-6. 


56 A. ROGERS 


his household into a major agency of administration as in the previous 
century; the problem was a more general one, of how to pay for a costly 
court at a time of other heavy expenditure, dwindling revenue and financial 
dislocation. By the end of the fourteenth century, even without the additi- 
onal problems of Henry IV’s reign, the ordinary and casual revenues no 
longer sufficed to meet the day to day needs of government. The problem 
of meeting the costs of the household thus became one of the use of parlia- 
mentary taxation. 

The costs of the royal household from 1396 to 1406 ran at a very high 
level — outrageously high for a time of peace according to contemporary 
political opinion.’® For the last ten years of Richard IT’s reign, the three 
wardrobes alone averaged over £40,000 p.a., and the chamber received an 
average of more than £6000 p. a. from the exchequer. During the last 
three years of the reign, the total (including the chamber) rose to over 
£56,000 p.a.4® During Henry’s first eighteen months, the three wardrobes 
spent at the rate of £55,000 p.a. and the chamber received from the exche- 
quer alone over £6,000 as well as large sums from other sources.47 The 
average expenses of the three wardrobes from 1399 to 1406 was only just 
under £40,000 p.a., despite severe and permanent reductions in the great 
wardrobe’s expenses from 1404.48 Chamber receipts from the exchequer 
for this period averaged at least £3,400 p.a. In addition to this, there were 
the satellite royal households, the costs of the return of queen Isabella to 
France, the marriages of the king’s daughters Blanche and Philippa, to- 
gether with their households, the four royal sons each with their own military 


45 Tout, op. cit., 4, 46. Cf. Haxey’s petition, 1397, Rot. Parl., 3, 339. The use of the term 
“outrageous” at this time is interesting, as Jacob, Fifteenth Century, 76, has noted. In 1399, 
outrageous royal grants were to be restrained; in January 1404, the costs of government were 
molt outrageouses; in October 1404, royal grants were once more outrageous, while in 1406 the 
king was to modify his household so as to avoid outrageous and excessive expenses in it, Rot. 
Parl., 3, 433, 523, 548, 579. The phrase, “outrageous and excessive expenses,” found its way 
into special pardons given to household departmental officers in May 1402 to excuse their ac- 
counts; it no doubt originated in their petitions for pardon, PRO, E159/178, Brevia directa 
baronibus, Pasche m. 16, 17d, 13d, 12d; Trinity m. 3, etc. It would seem to have been used 
even in the exchequer: in 1400 Norbury wrote of outrageous charges on the revenue, and Aller- 
thorpe wrote much the same to the king in 1401/2 (not 1410), D. M. Legge (ed.), Anglo-Norman 
Letters and Petitions (Anglo-Norman Text Soc., 1941), 396, 418. For a later example in a similar 
context, cf. Hoccleve,-Minor Poems (Early English Text Soc., 61, 1892), 62. In 1380, the parlia- 
ment had complained of outrageous costs of government, and in 1381 of outrageous royal grants, 
a further indication that the precedents of these years were in mind in the parliaments of 1404-6, 
Rot. Parl., 3, 89, 100. 

46 Figures derived from Tout, op. cit., 6, 98-101, 108-9; 4, 322-4, and PRO, E 364/30H, 32H. 

47 PRO, E361/7, rot. 1-1d; E361/5, rot. 9; E364/34H; E403/564, 567, 569. 

48 Derived from enrolled accounts, PRO, E361/7; E361 /5-6; E364/34H, 35G, 36G, 40A, 43F. 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 57 


and domestic establishment, and from 1403 the queen’s separate house- 
hold with her large endowment.!® The total costs of the private sector of 
government expenditure under Henry IV were very high indeed. It is 
unlikely that his court reflected adequately the magnificence which alone 
would justify such expenditure except in time of war.°° 

The expenditure could however be justified in terms of military activity. 
Some of Richard 115 heavy costs during his last ten years were due to the 
Irish expeditions.*! But under Henry IV there are few signs that the king’s 
household was used to finance military campaigns. It paid for the invasion 
force of 1399: but although it was extensively engaged in the Scottish 
campaign of 1400, payments were made by John Curson, treasurer for 
war. Thereafter there are no signs of vadia guerre in the wardrobe accounts 
until 1405 when the interrupted Welsh campaign and the journey to the 
north to suppress the Scrope rebellion were largely financed through the 
wardrobe. Henry’s household was not in general the military agency it 
had been earlier and was to become later under his son. 

This is seen clearly by Henry’s highest known dieta figures in 1402-3. 
This was one of the most hectic years of the whole reign, culminating in 
Hotspur’s revolt in July. We are fortunate in possessing the particule com- 
poti for this year to show that these heavy expenses were incurred more 
in peaceful pursuits than in the projected Scottish and actual Shrewsbury 
and Welsh campaigns. The daily average for the whole year was just over 
£61. During the six weeks of the parliament, October-November 1402, diet 
ran at £60; in the three weeks of the Shrewsbury campaign, it was at £50. 
Even during the journey north to deal with Northumberland and then 
back to Wales (27 July-30 September 1403), the average rose only to £55.4.°° 


49 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1401-5, 213; PRO, E101 /406/10; Archaeologia, 67 (1915-16), 163-188. The 
total costs for the return of Isabella were well over £10,000, P.O.P.C., 1, 154; PRO, E364/36E; 
PRO, E403 /564-571. 

50 There were a few complaints of lack of worthiness in the royal household, e.g. Eul., 3, 397; 
Rot. Parl., 3, 577. 

51 Tout, op. cit., 3, 486-95; 4, 222-3. But Richard’s highest costs came in 1396-7, between 
the two royal expeditions. 

52 PRO, KR, Mem. Rolls, E159/179, Brevia directa baronibus, Trinity m. 8; E403/564, 
20 March; E101/42/28; 43/3; E404/16/354. 

53 PRO, £159/182, Brevia directa baronibus, Mich. τὰ. 1d; E361/7, rot. 10-15d; Tout, op. 
cit., 4, 152, 225. 

54 PRO, E101/404/21. For background, see Bean, History, 44, 221-7; J. H. Wylie, Henry IV 
(London, 1884-98), 1, 337-78; P.O.P.C., 1, 206-7. Diet is calculated consumption, not actual 
costs; hence credit transactions, which inevitably accompanied a campaign, would not account 
for lower figures. 

ὅδ This figure would give an annual total of just £20,000, lower than under Henry’s prede- 
cessor. Richard II’s diet in 1396-7 was £32,300 p.a.; the average for 1395-9 was £27,480, 
cf. Tout, op. cit., 6, 98-101. 


58 A. ROGERS , 


This increase reflects not so much the acquisition of additional troops 
but the catching up of the staffs of various household departments with 
the energetic king. It was not the military contingent which caused 
the high costs in the household but the heavy expenses incurred by the 
king’s marriage and the coronation of his new queen, together with the 
burden of new and extra household staff. F ebruary alone (in which both 
major events fell) had a daily average of £126; and the weeks of March 
and April (omitting the feast of St. George) show an average of £57.5 
against an average of £49.2 in January before the marriage. The differences 
are not sufficient to demonstrate more than the negative point, that the 
great cost of diet in 1402-3 was not caused by the increased military activity 
of the year. 

Thus the commons saw the lay subsidy being used largely to support a 
non-military household®* while other arrangements were made to support 
the prince of Wales in the Welsh war, Thomas of Lancaster in Treland, 
John of Lancaster in the north and other forces in other spheres of military 
δοῦν γ.57 The costs of the king’s household remained high after 1399, 
too high for political safety in view of the strong complaints made against 
the excessive costs of Richard II’s household. For Richard’s usurper not to 
have reduced household costs after 1399 was neither economically nor 
politically wise; for him to have maintained them and to have reduced the 
military activity of the household was disastrous. Under Henry IV, the 
complaints against the king’s household were not directed so much against 
the use of the household members, as in the previous reign, as against its 
outrageous costs. To the commons it must have seemed that the king was 
regarding the parliamentary taxation as a regular source of income rather 
than an exceptional grant for exceptional circumstances. 


* 
Of 


There is of course no hint of this in the speeches which introduced the 
commons of each parliament to the king’s great needs. In every case 
throughout the reign, the emphasis lay on the military aspects rather than 
on the other causes of royal poverty. In 1401, the necessity was caused by 
the great costs and expenses at the king’s comin g into the realm, the Scottish 
expedition and the Welsh revolt, by the costs of the return of queen Isabella 


56 This is not to say that the personnel of Henry’s household was less military, only that it 
was not used as an institution to finance and organise campaigns on the same scale as before 
1399. 

57 Report on the Dignity of a Peer, 5, 126, 128; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1399-1401, 114, 507; ibid., 1401-5, 
212, 216; Rot. Parl., 3, 426-8, 569; P.O.P.C., 1, 154, 176-8, 313-8; Ann. 361; PRO, E404/18/561; 
E403/571, 9 Dec.; Rotuli Scotie (London, Record Commission, 1814-9), 2, 164, 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 59 


and the revived threat to Guienne, as well as the Irish war; the many other 
great charges which had to be sustained for the defence of the king and his 
realm will be declarez plus en especial as toutz lestates du Rotalme quant il bosoigne- 
ra. Thereafter the list of military expenses becomes the recurrent theme 
— Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France (Calais and Guienne), as well as 
the sea. In January 1404, the Shrewsbury rebellion was added to the list; 
in October 1404, relations with Britanny were also included.®* The king’s 
need for money was created by the complicated military situation of these 
years, despite the technical peace, according to the royal view presented 
to parliament. 

But the royal demand for money was complicated by the very fact of 
continuing truces, and this also is reflected in the pronunciations to parlia- 
ment during the period. In the parliaments between 1384 and 1390, the 
government openly asked for an aid; after outlining the major costs of the 
war, it is stated que le Roi ne poet en null manere porter les Coustages et Charges 
necessairs celle partie, come bien est conuz, sanz eide de ses Seignurs et Communes 
(1389 and 1390); or quod aliquod Subsidium dicto Domino Regi pro Guerra et 
Defensione hiuusmodi concedi necessario oportebit (1385); y faut de necessite que 
ascun sufficante Aide soit ordeine et grante a cest Parlement pur defense et salvacion 
du Roialme encontre les Enemys... (1386). But the request to the commons in 
the parliaments between 1391 and January 1397 was couched in different 
terms; parliament is to advise or ordain coment et de quoy la dite Guerre (if it 
arise) purra estre maintenuz a meindre charge du poeple (1391). The same phrase 
is used in 1393 and in 1397, while in 1394 it is again requested that parlia- 
ment should consider coment les Eides et Charges busoignables celle partie (i.e. 
defence pur les Extremitees du Roialme) purront meutz estre eu et supportez a 
greindre eide et profit du Roy et du Roialme et meyndre charge du poeple. In 1395 
it is asserted that toutz ses liges owe aid to their king nent soulement de bouche 
ne de lange mais en eovre et en veritee et de leur biens et substance, the nearest to a 
demand for taxation that the pronunciation approached.*° 

The change was largely brought about by the peace negotiations and the 
successive truces with France from 1389. And the same tone persisted 
throughout the parliaments of Henry IV. No aid was demanded in 1399, 
but in 1401 the king was forced to call a parliament to relieve his financial 
necessities. Even then, il nest pas lentention ne volunte du Roy de charger son 
poeple autrement que la besoigne et la necessite requiergent, and parliament was 
asked ent facent tielx aide, ordenance et purveance que purrovt estre sufficentz pur la 


58 Rot. Parl., 3, 454, 484, 522, 545. 

59 Rot. Parl., 3, 184, 203, 215, 257, 277, 284, 300, 309, 329, 337. The parliament of September 
1388 is not recorded ibid. For the parliament of February 1388, cf. 228, and A. Rogers, “Par- 
liamentary Appeals of Treason in the Reign of Richard II,” American Fournal of Legal History, 
8 (1964), 101-8. 


60 A. ROGERS 


salvation de mesme notre Seignur le Roy de et tout son Roialme. Again in 1402, 
the purpose of parliament was that the king should avoir lour bon aide, con- 
seul et advis celle partie. In 1404, parliament was twice asked to ordain for 
good government and defence, and in 1406, the king asked for advice and 
bone et sage conseil; he will then bon ordre et communication se preigne, [and] la 
metllour et pluis brief appointement se prendra es choses que sont necessairement a 
purvoire. In 1407, the approach was more direct: the various spheres of war 
embosoignent des biens, et sur ce [il] leur pria de eux prendre le pluis pres pur luy aider 
a cest foitz. In 1410, the king once more asked for advice, but in 1411, his 
demand was for cordiall relevation du Roy en son necessitee et en cas nient purveu 
discrete et hastif Provision.® 

Tt would thus seem that in time of peace, even when that peace was very 
disturbed, the king’s demands for aid were restricted to outlining his ex- 
treme necessities and asking parliament for advice and ordinance. It was 
of course clearly understood that parliament was called to extend the grant 
of the customs and to grant a lay subsidy. But the form in which the demand 
was presented was clearly important. 

Nor could the commons in fact deny the need which faced Henry IV. 
Throughout the reign, only one challenge to the king’s plea of necessity 
seems to have been made. There was no denying that the defence of the 
realm was in a parlous state. But when in November 1407 the commons 
rehearsed the many great mischiefs which had come to the realm, especially 
the failure to defend the coasts and to suppress the Welsh revolt, they avowed 
that they were not in any way obliged to sustain such wars. The main res- 
ponsibility ought to fall on those magnates who had lands in the disturbed 
areas. These should reside on their estates and resist the rebels ; and the 
commons petitioned that the king should discharge them from any obliga- 
tion in this respect. The royal reply was merely to take note of the petition. 
But apart from this hesitation over whether the defence of the realm included 
what could be regarded as the suppression of an internal revolt and border 
duties, the commons were obliged to agree to the king’s necessity and make 
the grants. 

Ἔ 
ae 

The activities of the commons throughout the reign were thus directed 
to the problem of making sure that parliamentary taxes were in fact used 
solely for the purposes for which they had been granted. Nevertheless 


69 Rot. Parl., 3, 415, 454, 485, 522, 545, 567, 608, 622, 647. I suggest aide in 1402 has not 
the specific sense of a money grant. 
81 Rot. Parl., 8, 610. 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 61 


parliament was very hesitant to take action. The house of commons was the 
main outlet for criticism; the council was the main agency for remedy. It 
is quite clear that the commons pinned their hopes on a reformed council. 
Thus in 1401, 1404, twice in 1406 and again in 1410, new nominated coun- 
cils were demanded, councils which would ordain remedy on behalf of the 
whole realm. However, there were certain actions which the commons 
could take to try to prevent misappropriation, and throughout the par- 
liaments of the reign most of these were in fact attempted. 

The first of these processes was the stipulation of the purpose of the 
grant. In 1401, the grant was pur Defens et bone Governance de votre dite 
Roialme, but thereafter the commons reserved parliamentary taxes solely 
for defence.** From 1402, it became customary to add to the record of the 
grant a proviso that the grant was not to be taken as a precedent for levy- 
ing any tax for the wars in Scotland, Wales, Calais, Guienne or Ireland, 
nor for the safety of the sea, save by the will of the lords and commons, 
and by a new grant made in full parliament. In January 1404, the tax 
was granted specifically pur les Guerres et pur la Defense du Rovalme.® In 
October 1404 when a land subsidy was granted, the customs renewed and 
a double tenth and fifteenth assented to, they were explicitly stated to be 
for the defence of the realm, and it was reiterated that they were granted 
on condition that all of these be expended on defence. Once again the 
grant was not to be a precedent for taking an aid for any of these causes 
save by the will of the lords and commons, and by a new grant made in 
full parliament. In the parliament of 1406, in the interim grant made in 
June, it was demanded that the subsidy granted at Coventry two years 
earlier should be used solely for the defence of the realm; while the final 
grant made in December was to be spent for the defence of the realm and the 
safe-guard of the sea and not for any other purpose. In 1407, after the 
controversy over the procedure of making parliamentary grants, the com- 
mons granted one and a half lay subsidies together with the customs; the 
first drafts on these were to be for the defence of the sea. In 1410, three- 
quarters of the wool customs were assigned solely to Calais, while the lay 
subsidy and half lay subsidy granted together with the customs and subsidies 
were all specifically for the defence of the realm. The same was true of the 
wool customs and tunnage and poundage granted in 1411, although the 
land tax granted in this parliament was stated to be entirely at the king’s 


62 Rot. Parl., 3, 530 (1404); 572-3, 585 (1406); 632 (1410); for 1401, see A. L. Brown, 
English Historical Review, 79, 5. Cf. Rot. Parl., 3, 221 for 1386, and ibid., 609, “the commons, 
having confidence in the great sense and discretion of the lords of the council,...” 

83 Rot. Parl., 3, 455. The same phrase is used in June 1406, ibid, 578. 

6 Rot. Parl., 3, 493, 529, 547. A similar proviso was attached in 1395 with regard to Ire- 
land, another in 1397 for the life grant of the customs, ibid., 330, 492. 


62 A. ROGERS. . 


free disposal.** On occasion the commons went further than merely specify- 
ing the purpose of the tax. In October 1404, the grant was to be voided if 
the king and council had not made provision for the safeguard of the sea, 
Guienne, north and south Wales, the Scottish Marches.and generally for 
the defence of the realm by early the following year. In June 1406 the 
interim grant was to be voided if the lords of the council were dismissed, 
and in December the commons are alleged to have demanded-a pledge 
that the council would refund the tax of it should be misspent.** This latter 
demand was apparently rejected; and although the former condition was 
accepted, it could hardly have been effective, for there was no machinery 
to enforce it. 

At the same time, the commons seem to have realised that some extra- 
ordinary methods must be used to reduce the king’s burden of indebtedness 
and thus to enable him to resume more normal dealings with his subjects. 
Up to 1406, in the allocations made for the household, no extraordinary 
sources were used. But in January 1404, the king had been granted £12,000 
from the land subsidy, to be received from the war treasurers.®? In December 
1406, the commons gave to the king £6,000 from the customs pur estre 
disposez a vos comandement et pleisir. In 1410,.a sum of 20,000 marks drawn 
from the lay subsidy, the tunnage and poundage and the unassigned 
quarter of the customs and spread over two years was assigned to the king 
a prendre et resceyver as termes suisditz pur ent disposer et faire a votre plesir. These 
grants were carefully earmarked, mention of them being made both in the 
warrants for issue and on the issue rolls.* : 

The commons did however take some steps to see how the taxes had been 
expended. The demand for audit of accounts made in 1341 and 1379 was 
now renewed, but it was clearly regarded as an innovation: kings are not 
wont to render account, it was alleged in 1406. The subject was first raised 
in January 1404. At Gloucester in 1407 the council offered the commons a 
view of the audited accounts of the last lay subsidy, but this was stated to be 
a matter of grace; the struggle in the 1406 parliament over auditing the 
accounts of the specially appointed war treasurers, had shown how tenuous 
was the commons’ claim, despite the fact that these war treasurers had been 
appointed specifically on the condition that they would render account in 
the next parliament.® ὃ 


85 Rot. Parl., 3, 546-7, 568, 578, 612, 627, 635, 648-9. 

86 Rot. Parl., 3, 546-7; St. Albans’ Chronicle, 1406-20, ed. V: H. Galbraith (Oxford, 1937), 2-3, 

87 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1399-1401, 245, 475,.504; ibid., 1401-5, 205, 240, 396; Rot. Parl., 3, 528; 
Cal. Fine Rolls, 1399-1405, 251-4. 

88 PRO, Warrants for Issue, E404/22/540, 563; 23/113, 176,..261; 27/173; Rot. Parl., 8, 
568, 635. The rest of the customs in 1410 were allocated to Calais, ibid., 3, 627; P.O.P. α, 1, 331. 

89 Rot. Parl., 2, 128; 3, 56, 546, 577-8, 609; Eul., 3, 409; Stubbs, Constitutional History, 3, 55-6. 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 63 


In the control of expenditure, the commons in general relied on the 
exchequer. They may indeed have welcomed the system of assignment by 
which control could: be exercised most easily over-the spending of any par- 
ticular source of revenue. But the commons were also concerned over the 
methods of authorising exchequer issues, and the struggle in 1406 over the 
control of the seals was largely aimed at giving the new council control 
over the spending of the taxes. The Bill which was conceded in May 1406 
and the articles of December placed control of the exchequer warrants 
for issues firmly in the hands of the council. Tn 1410 a further attempt at 
controlling warrants was made.”° : 

There ‘were occasions however when the commons went further and 
expressed mistrust-of the exchequer’s ability to withstand pressure from 
the king. In the January 1404 parliament, four ἐραϑατειι of war were 
appointed to collect and: to expend the new land tax, “so that the money 
coming in should be put on the wars and ἴο πο other use.” This action re- 
sulted in a complete breakdown of government finances, and a more 
moderate procedure was followed in the parliament later that year where- 
by the exchequer resumed the collecting of the.revenue but the two new 
war ‘treasurers controlled its issue under even more stringent regulations 
than in January 1404; it was to be treason to divert: the parliamentary 
taxes from the war effort.” In 1406, the appointment of the merchants to 
safeguard the sea with a direct endowment from the customs and subsidies 
was intended to be a practical gesture to get some effective action taken 
for the defence of the realm; it was only indirectly an attempt to prevent 
misappropriation. But the placing of effective control over the expending of 
the lay subsidy in the hands of the council at the end of that parliament had 
the same intention as the appointment of war treasurers earlier. Parliament- 
ary taxes were to'be used for the war alone; the costs of the government, 
including the Doane were to be met from the “revenues ao the realm 
alone.””? : , ι 
But apart from this defensive action, the commons anche the reign of 
Henry IV went-on the attack. As we have seen, one of the biggest drains 
on the exchequer was the king’s household. The heavy costs of meeting 
rebellions and foreign wars involved an inability of the household to pay 
its way, and the commons were very concerned at this. It was explicitly 
stated in November 1404 that the king’s debts. were not to be paid out of 


τὸ Rot. Parl., 3, 572-3, 625; cf. Brown, English Historical Review, 79, 16-24 for a, full-discussion. 

“TL Rot. Parl., 3; 528-9, 546; in January it was however agreed that sums might be used to 
combat rebellions. P.O.P.C., 1, 269-70. I hope to deal with this crisis year in detail in a forth- 
coming work on Henry IV’s reign. 

72 Rot. Parl., 3, 527, 569-71. 


64 A. ROGERS 


the war subsidies,”* but clearly something had to be done to enable the 
king to live of his own. 

The first line of attack, one familiar to much of the previous century, 
was to restrain royal improvidence, especially in the grants of annuities, 
and even to try to recover some of the alienated royal estates. In 1399 
there were criticisms of the outrageous and excessive royal grants; no 
grants were to be made without the advice of the council. A resumption 
of crown lands was urged and an attack was launched on those about the 
king who bought or received grants from the king.” Petitions against 
royal grants featured in most parliaments of the reign. In 1401, the regu- 
lations of 1399 were reiterated; in 1402, alienations of casualities were 
regarded as against the king’s own interests. The bitterly hostile parlia- 
ment of January 1404 was outspoken against royal grants, especially 
annuities, while later in the year the council suspended all annuities for 
one year.”> In the October parliament, 1404, an act of resumption was 
passed, the proceeds of which were to be used primarily for the king’s 
household and then for the queen’s dower, the aim being to relieve parlia- 
mentary sources of income. Further attacks on the royal power of patro- 
nage occurred in the 1406 parliament and some attempt was made to 
modify the procedure of granting petitions. In 1407, the statute of 1402 
was slightly amended, while in 1410, annuities were again suspended and 
another resumption was urged. The aim of all this is quite explicit — “The 
Comunes desiren that the Kyng shoulde leve upon his owne, as gode reson 
asketh.”76 

It was quite clear however that such measures would be ineffective 
unless the costs of the royal household were reduced. The commons urged 
on many occasions that the household sozt modifie and its expenses reduced. 
In 1400 the council emphasised the link between the military aspects and the 
royal household. In considering the sauvacion de lestat du Roi et de son roiaume 
in the face of threatened invasions, the king was urged mettre son houstiel 
en bone gouvernance.... 80 as to relieve the people. In January 1404 the com- 
mons themselves asserted that the king’s prodigality in his grants of castles, 


73 Rot. Parl., 3, 546. 

4 This may well have been caused by dispossession at the time of the revolution, cf. the 
hostile Dieulacres chronicle, “Deposition of Richard II,” ed. M. V. Clarke and V. H. Gal- 
braith, Bulletin of John Rylands Library, 14 (1930), 52: rex Henricus multa multis promisit et a di- 
versis dona juste data abstulit et aliis vispilionibus dedit. Cp. Rot. Parl., 3, 433, 438; Chronicon Adae 
de Usk, 1377-1421, ed. E. M. Thompson (London, 1904), 39. 

® Rot. Parl., 3, 471, 478-9, 495, 502, 523-4; Eul., 3, 399-400; Cal. Close Rolls, 1402-5, 347, 
377, 382; cf. Wylie, op. cit., 1, 462-3. 

%6 Rot. Parl., 3, 547-9, 569, 612-3, 624-5; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1405-9, 153; Cal. Glose Rolls, 1409- 
13, 52; P.O.P.C., 1, 350; Hoccleve, Regement of Princes (Early English Text Society, 1897), 68-9. 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 65 


lordships, lands and annuities made unduly and indiscreetly et par especial... 
les grandes Charges et Dispenses de lostel du Roy were greatly damaging to the 
defence of the realm, and they demanded that the lords should make 
ordinance for the royal household plaisant a Dieu et honour et profit pur lestat 
du Roy et de son Roialme. In 1406 the commons demanded that the royal 
household should be reduced en eschuir de les outrageouses et excessives Despenses 
en_ycell; and later in the session the council was ordered to ordain moderate 
governance for the household.”” 

Apart from complaining about the costs of the household and urging the 
council that the household purroit estre mys en bone et moderate Governance, the 
commons took action themselves on occasion. In January 1404, as a result 
of extreme criticism from the commons, the king agreed to include the 
great wardrobe expenses in his chamber certum,”® and although this arrange- 
ment did not persist for long, from that year the average expenses of the 
great wardrobe were cut by three quarters for the rest of the reign.” In 
1404 and again in 1406, members of the households of the king and queen 
were dismissed at the request of the commons. In January 1404 four of 
the minor members of the king’s household were named as forbidden the 
court; since one of these was the king’s confessor, it is clear that parliament 
was relying upon the precedent of 1381 when the commons were explicitly 
attempting to reduce the costs of the household. Of the others, the house- 
hold connection of two of them is obscure and the third was a minor cham- 
ber esquire.®° At the same time all aliens were expelled from the household 
by statute on the grounds of defence as well as economy, although a number 
of exceptions were named for the benefit of the queen. This was followed 
up by a more serious and effective attack on aliens in the second session of 
the long parliament of 1406; in this case 43 named aliens, most of them 
clearly associated with the queen’s household, were ordered to leave the 
realm and many did so. 

Secondly the commons limited the wardrobe to a certum like the chamber; 


77 P.O.P.C., 1, 107-111 295-6; Rot. Parl., 3, 523-4, 525, 579. 

78 Rot. Parl., 3, 527, 529: pur ses Chambre et Garderobe il se vorrott tenir pur content de le mettre tout 
en une somme...; for the commons’ criticism, see Fraser, op. cit. 

79 PRO, E361/5 and 6. Average annual expenses, 1399-1403, £11,124; 1403-1412 (no ac- 
count for 1412-13), £2,600. Cf. under Richard 11, average, 1394-99, £12,184. Great ward- 
robe expenses remained at the lower figure throughout the fifteenth century. 

80 Rot. Parl., 3, 525, 101; cf. Tout, op. ci., 3, 381. Robert Mascall was confessor until 1404, 
Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1401-5, 11, 412. Gf. A. B. Emden, Biographical Register to University of Oxford 
(Oxford, 1957-9), sub nom. Richard Dereham was master of King’s Hall, Cambridge, and a 
royal envoy; cf. A.B. Emden, Biographical Register to the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 
1963), sub nom. The abbot of Dore seems to have had no household links. John Crosseby was 
an esquire of the chamber in 1402-3, PRO, E101 /404/21, fol. 46. 

81 Rot. Parl., 3, 527, 569, 571-2, 578; Ann., 379, 419; PRO, PSO 1/1/43; 1/3/19. 


66 ' A. ROGERS 


and although the figure eventually arrived at was never strictly adhered to, 
it must have acted as some restraint upon the willingness of the exchequer 
to answer all the king’s demands for money. During the crisis of the first 
parliament of 1404 the king agreed to an allocation of £12,100 p.a. for the 
wardrobe. ‘This allocation was to come entirely from the ordinary revenues 
of the realm. In fact the final certum for the wardrobe, fixed at £16,000 p.a., 
was settled by the council in 1408 and ran through almost to the end of 
the reign. Further, in 1404 and again in 1406, the commons petitioned that 
the queen’s dower might be secured from regular sources of revenue rather 
than from casualties; it is clear that the exchequer was having to meet 
large deficits each year by assignments. Other detailed regulations for the 
queen’s household were drawn up in 1406® to reduce the cost of her estab- 
lishment to the nation. of PR te, Aeros 

But the most striking of all the commons’ attempts to prevent misap- 
propriation of parliamentary taxes ito the household came late in the parlia- 
ment of 1406. with the appointment of Sir John Tiptoft, the Speaker, as 
treasurer of the king’s household. Throughout the fourteenth century, the 
commons’ concern over taxation had on occasion resulted in ministerial 
changes, but rarely had the household itself been attacked: Nor was the 
treasurership of the household considered as an office of political importance. 
But by 1406 it was seen to be the key to the problem, and the office passed 
for the first time into lay hands. Further, it is quite clear that the new ap- 
pointment was made to a large extent to satisfy the commons; for although 
Tiptoft was one of the king’s chamber knights, he replaced. Richard 
Kyngeston, an old friend and trusted servant of Henry and one who had 
been associated with a revived use of the household in. 1405.8 

For the commons to bring pressure to bear at such a point was almost 
unprecedented. But only by controlling such’ an appointment could 
effective reforms be carried out. For while it is true that the ultimate cause 
of expense at court was the king’s will, the treasurer of the household being 
merely a royal servant, nevertheless it is also clear that the treasurer could 
to a certain extent control all. financial acts which passed through his 
hands and thus limit extravagance and “ordain remedy”. And for the 
first time the treasurer of the household was made a: member of the council 
charged to reform and provide for the king’s household. a 

In fact, a great deal was achieved by Tiptoft and the council. A new 
programme seems to have been worked out and put into effect between 1406 


82 Rot. Parl., 3, 528-9, 548, 577, 588, cf. 632-3; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1491-5, 396; ἰδία, 1409-13, 
35, 37, 151, 206; P.O.P.C., 1, 342; 2, 11. 

83 J. S. Roskell, The Commons and their Speakers in English Parliaments, 1376-1523 (Manchester, 
1965), 147-8; R. L. Storey, “English Officers of State,” B.LHLR., 31, 90; PRO, DL28/1/2, 
fol. 1d; Derby Accounts (Camden Society, Second Series), 52 (1894). ; 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 67 


and 1408. The council considered the details of household finances and 
authorised the warrants. Household costs were substantially reduced after 
1406; the average for the three wardrobes for the years 1406-13 was just 
over £20,000 p.a.** Reforms in personnel were made. But from the point of 
view of the constitutional struggle we have. been tracing, the part of the 
new programme which was of great significance was that the wardrobe 
was put back on a military basis once more, first for the Calais expedition, 
later for Wales, and the king proposed to go in person to the war.®* Although 
the commons in 1406 had reiterated the demand of 1404 that the household 
was to. be supported by the ordinary revenues of the realm, no assignments 
for the wardrobe were made on ordinary or casual sources at all for the 
whole of 1407. From May 1407 large payments from the lay subsidy to 
the household were authorised by the council, £2,000 to the chamber and 
£5,000 to the wardrobe, and a further £3,000 from the customs — all 
expressly for the royal expedition to Wales. It may well have been these 
allocations which caused the commons’ assertion in October 1407 that they 
were not bound to pay for the Welsh expedition. These payments were 
however extended in 1408 and in the year 1408-9, £4,500 was received by 
the wardrobe in assignments on the lay subsidy. No lay subsidy was col- 
lected during the first year of the prince of Wales’ tenure of power, but in 
the second year, when a lay subsidy was collected, no assignments were 
made on it for the king’s household. After the fall of the prince’s adminis- 
tration, however, in the last terms of the reign, a few small assignments on 
the lay subsidy were made to the wardrobe, although the military character 
of the household had disappeared once more with the illness of the king.** 

It would thus seem that the king won the struggle, or at least that it 
went by default in the last few years of the reign. The outbreak of the 
French war may have contributed to this. The last parliamentary tax of 
the reign (1411, land tax) was placed entirely at the king’s free disposal.8” 
Henry V faced no opposition when he drew on the lay subsidy to support 
his household, now heavily engaged in the French war. But the struggle 


84 From figures in.accounts cited above, note 48. ; 

i Cal. Close Rolls, 1405-9, 222-3, 257, 259, 261; PRO, DL 42/16, fol. 85, 209, 221d-222; 
PRO, E404/22/485-7, warrants for exchequer payments to wardrobe pro mora ipsius domini Regis 
in propria persono sua super salva custodia parlium Wallie ... in defencionem regni Anglie. The issue roll 
speaks of the king’s firmum propositum eundem versus partes Wallie, E403 /591, 1 June. The king 
never went, a fact which may account for the commons’ unrest in 1407. 

86 Rot. Parl., 3, 586-7 (6), 610; PRO, E404/22/482, 486-7, 507; ibid., 23/273-4; E403/597, 
599; E401/647, 649, 656, 657: no receipt roll is available for the Easter term, 1412. 

87 Rot. Parl., 3, 648-9. It may be that this novel form of tax was devised here and in 1404 
to overcome the obstacle of the by now usual assignment of the tenth and fifteenth to military 
purposes. 


68 A. ROGERS 


continued. In 1426, during the minority of Henry VI, the lords in parlia- 
ment declared that a subsidy granted by the commons was to be collected 
and expended for the king’s use, notwithstanding any condition in the grant, 
to which the commons retaliated by granting a subsidy on condition that 
“it ne no part thereof be beset ne dispendid to no othir use, but oonly in and 
for the defense of the seid roialme.” In 1449-50, the commons again ap- 
pointed war treasurers who were to pay the army.*® In 1468, Edward IV 
linked all the aspects of this struggle in his own speech to parliament in 
which he promised “to lyve uppon my nowne and not to charge my Sub- 
gettes but in grete and urgent causes, concernying more the wele of theym- 
self, and also the defence of theym and of this my Reame, rather than my 
nowne pleasir... and also shall, in tyme of nede, applie my persone for the 
wele and defence of you and of this my Reame, not sparing my body nor 
lyfe for eny jeoparde that mought happen to the same.” The excessive costs 
and misappropriation of parliamentary taxes were not of course the only 
cause of opposition to the royal household in the fifteenth century, but they 
were the most frequent occasion of criticism by the commons.® The situa- 
tion was only to undergo substantial alteration when later fifteenth century 
kings could manage to do without parliamentary taxes for long periods. 
ae 
+ ἧς 

The struggles thus of king and parliament in the reign of Henry IV were 
not over minor issues, but over the whole field of royal prerogative and 
parliamentary power of consent to taxation. The king may ask his realm 
for aid in time of necessity. While his subjects must grant the tax, provided 
the necessity is proven, parliament is under some obligation to its con- 
stituents to see that the tax is not abused. It is this which gives coherence 
to the activities of the commons during the reign. The causes of the clash 
do not lie so much in the difficulties created by defining the king’s necessity 
in a time of peace or truce as in the activities of the king and government 
in using all royal sources of income for all purposes of government, and thus 
in breaking the conditions on which parliament originally voted the sup- 
plies. The commons did not regard the attaching of a condition “solely 
for defence” to the grant merely as a formality; in June 1406 they allowed 
the king to take a small part of the customs granted in the previous parlia- 
ment for his own use, notwithstanding that it had been granted solely for 
defence; but if the new lords of the council were dismissed during the term 


88 PRO, E403/624, 11 May, 27 June, 18, 23 July; Rot. Parl., 4, 301-2; ibid. 5, 172-4; cf. note 
in Taswell-Langmead’s English Constitutional History, ed. T. F. T. Plucknett (11th ed., London, 
1960), 186. 

89 Rot. Parl., 5, 572; cf. ibid., 5, 216 (1450); etc.; A. R. Myers, Household of Edward IV (Man- 
chester, 1959), 5-13, 


HENRY IV, THE COMMONS AND TAXATION 69 


of the grant, then the conditions attached to the grant in the previous parlia- 
ment were to have full force, “notwithstanding this present modification.”®° 

In resisting the king’s efforts to use extraordinary taxes for all purposes 
of government, including a non-military royal household, the commons had 
three main lines of action open to them — to insist that the taxes were used 
for the purpose for which they were granted by exhortation, by attaching 
specific conditions to the grant, by demanding audited accounts or even by 
appointing their own financial officers; secondly, to insist that the king 
should live “of his own”, by creating funds of ordinary revenue, by restrain- 
ing royal liberality and by acts of resumption ; and thirdly, to cut household 
costs, by fixing a certum and specific allocations, by making the king dismiss 
personnel, and eventually by appointing their own Speaker as the king’s 
household treasurer. In each case, the commons were reluctant to take 
action; they relied on the exchequer to control spending or on the council 
to make ordinances. But in each case also, they were eventually forced to 
take the initiative, to appoint war treasurers, to insist on acts of resumption, 
to make a demonstration against some household members, to make the 
chief financial officer of the wardrobe into a political figure. The frequency 
of Henry IV’s demands for money gave them their opportunity, and during 
the reign one of the more bitter constitutional struggles of the middle ages 
was fought out. ᾿ 

A final word must be added as to the significance of this struggle in the 
history of the medieval parliament. There was nothing “modern” in this 
clash between king and commons. Parliament was still regarded as an occa- 
sional state occasion, when the king was surrounded by his council and 
representatives of the whole “body” of the nation.“ Emphasis on the 
careful study of parliamentary precedents by the commons and the frequent 
re-election of representatives may blind us to the fact that the commons 
were not seeking a permanent place in the administration of the realm. 
Theirs was a more limited aim, an attempt to ensure that the existing rules 
were kept. It was not until the disastrous concepts ‘of sovereignty as- 
sociated with Jean Bodin gained currency in England that a new era in the 
history of parliament began — the age of Wentworth and Coke. Stubbs’ 
judgment on the 1406 parliament, that it “seems almost to stand for an 
exponent of the most advanced principles of medieval constitutional life 
in England”® must be read with the emphasis on the word medieval. 


University of Nottingham. 


80 Rot. Parl., 3, 578. 
91 Cf. Rot. Parl., 3, 608. 
92 Stubbs, op. cit., 3, 59. 


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Aquinas —: Existential Permanence and Flux 


JOSEPH OWENS, Ο. Ss.R. 


UOTED just in itself, without explicit indication. of context, a 
statement of St Thomas Aquinas.in the Contra Gentiles (I, 20, 
Procedit) may give the impression of a fixed and static character .for 
existence in all creatures. The text reads: “Esse autem est aliquid fixum 
et quietum -in ente.” Taken. alone it would suggest that no. matter how 
fluid and changeable everything else in a, being is, the existence of the 
being remains something definitely fixed, something permanent. and 
stable in the manner of a terminus actually attained and now serenely 
at rest above the vicissitudes of lower levels. 

However, the lone text needs to be. balanced against some other re- 
levant tenets of Aquinas. in respect of existence. These. stress rather 
the variability of temporal. existence. Instead of something fixed and 
stable, they tend to describe an actuality that is incessantly changing 
from past through present: into the future.? Instead of something that 
has reached the terminal status expressed by the notion quies, the finally 
achieved. perfection, they present’ temporal existence as inevitably im- 
perfect, lacking what has already gone by of itself and what is yet to be 
of itself, and characterized by progressive sequence rather than by 


1-So: “The subsistere confers the stability: and.relative permanence. of the created ens to which 
the statement. ‘esse est aliquid fixum et quietum in ente’ refers; but it is the permanence and 
stability of an ens which, in order to be, must tend (through its powers and operations) to its own 
self-realization.” G. B. Phelan, “The Being of Creatures,” Proceedings of the American Catholic 
Philosophical Association, 31 (1957), 125. Cf: “In all things on earth the act of being (esse) is 
the consubstantial urge of nature, a restless, striving force, carrying each being (ens) onward, 
from within the depths of its own reality to its full self-achievement, i-e., fully to. be what by its 
nature it is apt to become.” Phelan, “The Existentialism of St. Thomas,” Proceedings, 21 (1946), 
35. The comparison with the Bergsonian flux is noted, ibid., τι. 20. Speaking of the aspect of 
goodness, St Thomas is able to say “eiusdem rationis sit tendere in finem, et in fine quodammodo 
quiescere; ... Haec autem duo inveniuntur competere ipsi esse.” De Ver., XXI, 2c... The meaning 
here, however, is that existence is the object of both tending and possessing. — 

2 See texts below, nn. 29-35. 

3 In I Sent., ἃ. 8, q. 1, a. 1,.Solut.; ed. Mandonnet, I, 195. A discussion may be found in 
my article “Diversity and Community of Being in St Thomas Aquinas,” Mediaeval Studies, 22 


72 J. OWENS 


rest. Moreover, the conception of existence as “something” stable in 
a being is enough to arouse a bit of suspicion, on account of the way 
existence is regularly distinguished from thing in the Thomistic writ- 
ings. True, one has to think and speak of existence as “something,” 
even where one expressly denies that it is a thing. Yet the combination 
of notions in “something fixed” and “something stable” seems difficult 
to accommodate very convincingly to the dynamic actuality of sensible 
things that is designated by the term esse in the sense of existence through- 
out the Thomistic texts. 

Rather, is not the notion suggested by the above text, when taken in 
isolation, that of the Aristotelian form? Form for Aristotle is something 
definite and determined. It is the terminus of motion, and as such is in the 
state of immobility described by the metaphors of tranquility or repose 
(éremia, Latin quies): “when a thing is subject to motion its immobility is 
rest.”° In a philosophy in which being is ultimately identified with form, 
the assertion that the ultimate actuality of a being is fixed and at rest would 
ring perfectly true. The implied opposition would be that of the finally 
achieved form to the process of movement by which it was reached. Or, 
in things that are immobile, it would mean the real formal perfection that 
is incapable of ever perishing. In a word, the assertion fits neatly enough 
into a strictly Aristotelian setting, while on the other hand it seems to 
swing somewhat ajar of a notion of existence that takes time seriously. 

What, then, does the context reveal about the bearing of this assertion ? 
Does it show that the assertion is meant to be a tenet to which Aquinas 
himself is committed ? Or is it dealt with merely as a tenet of someone else 
that happens for the moment to be under discussion ? Certainly this con- 
sideration calls for an inquiry before any doctrinal exegesis can be under- 
taken. Likewise, concerning the extent to which St Thomas himself may be 
committed to the assertion, should not the context be probed for the type of 
existence that is in question? Is temporal existence meant, or eviternal 
existence, or divine existence, or existence in general? Once the meaning 
of the assertion in its own context has been determined, the further problem 


(1960), 289-291. It is impossible for the parts to exist together: “ubicumque est prius et posterius, 
oportet intelligere partem priorem et posteriorem, et in nulla duratione partes priores et poste- 
riores sunt simul; unde oportet quod quando est prius non sit posterius; et ideo oportet posterius 
de novo advenire, cum prius non fuerit.” Jn II Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 1, Solut.; IT, 63. 

4 “TIlud enim quod habet potentiam non recipientem actum totum simul, mensuratur tempore: 
hujusmodi enim habet esse terminatum et quantum ad modum participandi, quia esse recipitur 
in aliqua potentia, et non est absolutum quantum ad partes durationis, quia habet prius et 
posterius.” In I Sent., d. 8, q. 2, a. 2, Solut.: I, 205. See also texts below, nn. 29, 34 and 42. 
The existence is closed (terminatum) specifically, but open in time. 

5 Ph., ΠΙ 2, 202a4-5; Oxford tr. For other texts, see Bonitz, Ind. Arist., 320b34-38. 


AQUINAS —- EXISTENTIAL PERMANENCE AND FLUX 73 


of its relation to the general doctrine of Aquinas on existence can be ap- 
proached. Finally, there is the bearing of the fixity or flux of existence, as 
it emerges from these investigations, upon the unchangeable or changing 
character of truth. This will be a problem that can hardly be avoided in 
the framework built up by the discussion. But the initial task will be to 
examine the assertion “Esse autem est aliquid fixum et quietum in ente” 
carefully in its own setting. 


II 


The assertion occurs in a chapter of the Contra Gentiles devoted to the 
demonstration that God is not a body. After giving his own reasons for 
this conclusion, Aquinas adds (CG, I, 20, Item inveniuntur) that arguments 
of the philosophers, taken from the eternity of motion, are found to sustain 
it. In the discussion of these, he finds himself obliged to examine the possi- 
bility of eternal duration for the heavens. He interprets Plato as meaning 
that the heavenly bodies are of themselves perishable, but through the 
infinite power of God acquire perpetuity of duration: 

Ad hoc autem a quibusdam respondetur quod corpus caeleste secundum 
potentiam suam potest deficere, sed perpetuitatem durationis acquirit ab 
alio quod. est potentiae infinitae. Et huic solutioni videtur attestari Plato 


qui de corporibus caelestibus Deum loquentem inducit in hunc modum: 
Natura vestra estis dissolubilia, voluntate autem mea indissolubilia: ...° 


He recalls, however, that this answer to the problem has been rejected 
by Averroes on the ground that perpetuity of existence cannot be acquired 
from an external cause: 


Nam impossibile est, secundum eum, quod id quod est de se possibile non 
esse, acquirat perpetuitatem essendi ab alio. Sequeretur enim quod corrup- 
tibile mutetur in incorruptibilitatem. Quod. est impossibile secundum ipsum.’ 


The repetition in secundum eum and secundum ipsum would suggest an aim 
of St Thomas to dissociate himself from the unqualified tenet that a thing 
cannot acquire perpetuity of existence from an efficient cause. The tenet 
is clearly marked as that of Averroes. Elsewhere* the view is regarded as 


8. CG, I, 20, Ad hoc (Leonine manual no. 3). Cf Plato, Ti, 41 AB. 

7 Ibid., Hanc autem. Cf. Averroes: “Permanentia igitur motus est ex alio, substantia autem 
ex se. Et ideo impossibile est invenire substantiam possibilem ex se, necessarium ex alio, quod 
est possibile in motu.” In XII Metaph., comm. 41 (Venice, 1547), fol. 324v2 (L). On the Scrip- 
tural issue involved for St Thomas, see below, n. 18. 

8 “Avicenna namque posuit, quod quaelibet res praeter Deum habebat in se possibilitatem ad 
esse et non esse. Cum enim esse sit praeter essentiam cuiuslibet rei creatae, ipsa natura rei 
creatae per se considerata, possibilis est ad esse; necessitatem vero essendi non habet nisi ab alio, 


74 - J. OWENS 


“more reasonable” than the opposite stand of Avicenna, for whom all 
things except. God had in themselves the possibility of losing existence. 
Yet in the present. chapter of the .Contra Gentiles, the Averroistic tenet is 
rejected as insufficient for coping with the immediate problem. The 
reason is taken from Aristotle: ee 


Sciendum: tamen ‘quod haec responsio-Commentatoris* non est sufficiens. 
Quia, etsi detur quod in corpore caelesti non sit potentia quasi passiva ad 
esse, quae est potentia materiae, est tamen in eo potentia quasi activa, quae 
est virtus essendi: cum expresse Aristoteles dicat, in I Caeli et Mundi, quod 
caelum habet virtutem ut sit semper.° 


Quite patently, St Thomas is envisaging in the heavenly bodies a quasi 
active or formal capability of existing forever, yet a capability that does 
not at all place in them a potentiality for substantial change. Contrary to 
Averroes, then, he is seeing in the heavenly body a capacity for perpetual 
existence, a capacity that.can.be actuated by an extrinsic efficient cause. 
Further, in contrast to the duration of motion, he is according the heavens 


a type of existence that is not subject to variation : 

Motus autem secundum sui rationem quantitatem habet et extensionem: 
_ unde duratio eius infinita requirit quod potentia movens sit infinita, Esse 
_ autem non habet aliquam extensionem quantitatis: ‘praecipue in re cuius 
esse est invariabile, sicut caelum. Et ideo non oportet quod virtus essendi 
sit infinita in corpore finito, licet in infinitum duret: quia non differt quod. 
"per illam virtutem aliquid duret in uno instanti vel tempore infinito, cum 
esse illud invariabile non attingatur a tempore nisi per accidens (CG, I, 

20, Et ideo). 
What conception of existence is involved’ in ‘this reasoning? Is not 
existence regarded as having different types, one type of which is invariable 
while another type.is variable? Though motion of its nature — secundum 
sui rationem —has quantity and extension, existence does not have any. 
In the context should not this mean that of its own nature existence does 
not have extension, but with the possibility that it may have extension on 
account of something added to it? Motion by its nature requires extension. 
No. way of eliminating its extension seems envisaged.!° But while existence 


- Commentator vero contrarium ponit, scilicet quod quaedam res creatae sunt in quarum natura 
non est possibilitas ad non esse, quia quod in sua natura’ habet possibilitatem ad non esse, non 
potest ab extringeco actuirere sempiternitatem, ut scilicet sit per naturam suam sempiternum. 
Et haec quidem positio videtur rationabilior.” De Pot., V, 3c. pean 't 

9. CG, I, 20, Sciendum (no. 3). Cf. Averroes : “Et debes'scire quod istud corpus caeleste non 
indiget virtute movente semper in loco tantum, sed virtute largiente in se, et sua substantia per- 
manentiam aeternam,” Sermo de Substantia Orbis, c. 2 (Venice, 1573), fol. 6va (I): 

10'“Tnvenitur autem in actu qui motus est, successio prioris et posterioris. Et haec duo, 
scilicet piius et posterius, secundum quod numerantur per animam, habent rationem mensurae 


AQUINAS —— EXISTENTIAL PERMANENCE AND FLUX 75 


does not require quantitative extension, it is represented as excluding it 
not absolutely but rather with a qualification. The exclusion applies 
especially in a thing whose existence is invariable, for instance the heavens. 
Does not this way of thinking imply recognition of another type of existence 
that is variable? Does it not present existence as without quantitative 
extension in its own nature, but as having extension in some things and 
lacking it in others? The lack of quantitative extension is found not as the 
condition tout court of all existence, but as an appropriate condition that 
holds especially for existence that is invariable. The type of quantitative 
extension that is involved is made clear in the last lines of the above quo- 
tation. It is the kind that is spread out in time, the existence of temporal 
things. The invariable type of existence, on the other hand,. as far as it 
itself is concerned, is not touched by time. Accordingly it is measured 
neither by a temporal instant nor’ by infinite time. 

Does not this make a thoroughly consistent picture of existence as con- 
trasted with motion? In its own nature existence is invariable. The 
characteristic of invariability will therefore have to be found where existence 
subsists as a nature. But in creatures existence does not enter into any nature. 
In point of fact, the existence first known by the human mind is measured 
by time. This kind of quantitative extension, however, does not belong to 
existence as such. Especially it is not found where existence, untouched by 
time, is invariable. Motion, on the other hand, is of its very nature measu- 
rable by time. . ao | 

‘The context in the Contra Gentiles (I, 20, Quarta obiectio) then goes on 
to discuss a further objection to Aristotle’s conclusion that what imparts 
motion through infinite time requires infinite power. Something like the 
sun, whose power is finite, can act upon subordinate things forever, since 
—— according to ancient physics — its power isnot lessened by that activity. 
This will hold for any movent that does not undergo alteration in imparting 
movement. —- The answer to the objection is that every body insofar as 
it imparts motion is being moved by something else. Accordingly of itself 
it has the possibility to be moved and the possibility not to be moved, and 
the possibility to be moved perpetually by an incorporeal movent: 


Sed corpus quod de se possibile est moveri et non moveri, movere et non 
movere, acquirere potest perpetuitatem motus ab aliquo. Quod oportet esse 
~ incorporeum. ... Et sic nihil prohibet secundum naturam corpus finitum, 
: quod acquirit ab alio perpetuitatem in moveri, habere etiam perpetuitatem 


per modum numeri, quae tempus est.” In I Sent., ἃ. 19, q. 2, a. 1, Solut.; I, 467. Cf: “... sicut 
enim tempus est numerus prioris et posterioris in motu, ita etiam aevum est unitas permanentiae 
actus qui est esse vel operatio creati, ...” In II Sent., d. 2, q. 1,a. 1, ad 5m; IT, 65. Cf. text above, 
πῃ. 3. 


76 J. OWENS 


in movere: nam et ipsum primum corpus caeleste, secundum naturam, po- 
test perpetuo motu inferiora corpora caelestia revolvere, secundum quod 
sphaera movet sphaeram (CG, I, 20, Procedit). 


In the framework of the ancient astronomy, then, the possibility that a 
finite heavenly body may acquire perpetuity of motion from an incorporeal 
movent is illustrated and established. But does this fit in with the tenet of 
Averroes that anything capable of non-existence is not able to receive 
perpetuity in existence from anything else ? St Thomas, it will be remember- 
ed," has just shown himself quite cool towards that tenet. The tenet in its 
absolute scope is clearly marked as one to which he himself does not adhere. 
Yet he seems anxious to show that even in the Averroistic setting there is 
no incompatibility in holding that a body capable of repose may receive 
from something else motion in perpetuity. In this connection the statement 
that occasioned the present paper occurs: 


Nec est inconveniens secundum Commentatorem quod illud quod est de se 
in potentia moveri et non moveri, acquirat ab alio perpetuitatem motus, 
sicut ponebatur esse impossibile de perpetuitate essendi. Nam motus est 
quidam defluxus a movente in mobile: et ideo potest aliquod mobile ac- 
quirere ab alio perpetuitatem motus, quam non habet de se: Esse autem 
est aliquid fixum et quietum in ente: et ideo quod de se est in potentia ad 
non esse, non potest, ut ipse dicit, secundum viam naturae acquirere ab alio 
perpetuitatem essendi (zbid.). 


What bearing does this context give to the notion “aliquid fixum et 
quietum in ente” ? It places the notion directly in contrast with movement. 
Fixum implies something associated with immobility, quietum implies the 
opposite of motion.” In the contrast motion is described as a “defluxus 


11 See supra, nn. 7 and 9. 

12. Fixus is regularly associated by Aquinas with immobility. E.g., “fixe et immobiliter,” 
ST, I, 64, 2c; “res fixas et permanentes,” 104, 2c. Its habitual use to designate the fixed stars 
in contrast to the wandering planets, e.g., ST, I, 68, 4c, might be enough to suggest it in this 
meaning for the present context. It was already accepted in the discussion: “Corpus autem 
caeleste est quasi materia istius formae abstractae, quia est materia existens in actu. Et ideo 
non assimilatur materiae, nisi in hoc tantum, quia est materia fixa ad recipiendum formam. ... 
est in potentia forma in eo fixa, et dicitur subjectum, quia est fixa formae, ...” Averroes, De Sub- 
stantia Orbis, c. 2; fol. 6va (GH). The “stans quieta” of the Liber de Causis, 30, is explained by 
St Thomas: “Primo quidem quia perpetuitas aeternalis est fixa, stans, immobilis; perpetuitas 
autem temporalis est fluens et mobilis, ...” Sancti Thomae de Aquino Super Librum de Causis Ex- 
positio, ed. H. D. Saffrey (Fribourg & Louvain, 1954), 136b and 139.15-17. “Fixa,” as can be 
seen here, is used to express the same notion as “quieta.” Cf. use of fixa and fixio, ibid., 92-93. 

Quies is:‘regular as the opposite of movement. E.g., “opposita, quae sunt quies et motus,” 
St Thomas, Jn VIL Phys., lect. 21, Angeli-Pirotta, no. 2497; “ad quietem, quia motui eius con- 
trariatur quies,” ibid., no. 2488; “cum perventum fuerit ad actum, motus quiescit,” CG, I, 20, 


AQUINAS — EXISTENTIAL PERMANENCE AND FLUX 77 


a movente in mobile.” Of its nature it is a process that comes from the 
movent into the thing moved. The preposition “in” requires here the 
accusative case. Existence, on the other hand, as “aliquid fixum et quie- 
tum” is regarded merely as in its corresponding subject, and not as coming 
from anything else. It is “in ente,” with the ablative case, while motion is 
“in mobile,” with the accusative. Because motion is something that comes 
from a movent, the reasoning then goes, a mobile thing can acquire perpe- 
tuity of motion from something else even though it does not have it of 
itself. On the contrary, what is capable of non-existence cannot, on the 
strength of the above premise, as Averroes says, acquire perpetuity of 
existence from anything else. 

How is this conclusion drawn? The meaning seems to be that motion 
is of its very nature the acquisition of new actuality from an efficient cause 
that is something other than the thing being moved. Naturally, if the 
external cause will keep exercising its efficiency forever, there is no problem 
in the perpetual movement of a body, even though of itself — that is, if 
the efficient cause would let it alone — it is able to come to a stop. On the 
other hand, existence is something that does not imply the influx of an 
external cause. It is something as it were settled and fixed, something not 
in process but in repose. This should mean that of its own nature existence 
is not to be regarded as an actuality coming from anything else. Rather, 
it is an independent fixture in the thing. It is to be gauged on the merits of 
the thing’s internal condition, not on the way the thing is handled by others. 
While the thing’s motion is dependent on the movent, its existence is entirely 
its own affair. Consequently if of itself a thing is capable on non-existence, 
the whole story has been told. In the natural course of events, external 
causes are not abletointervene in a way that would give the thing perpetual 
existence.® 


Item nullus. It is likewise used regularly in this way in the Latin translation of Averroes, e.g., 
De Subst. Orbis, c. 5 (fol. 11:1), In XII Metaph., comm. 41 (fol. 324v1). 

The notion expressed by the two terms is contrast to movement, and is accordingly different 
from the concept esse firmum: “... accidentium quae habent esse firmum in natura, et quae sunt 
accidentia individui” (In I Sent., d. 8, q. 5, a. 2, ad 4; I, 230); “fiirmitatem sui esse, ... sicut 
alia accidentia a suis subjectis” (ibid., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, ad 5m; I, 72). Cf. “esse ratum et firmum,” 
De Pot., 111, 7, ad 7m. 

18 This tenet lies in the background of the Tertia via, ST, I, 2, 3c. While in the present con- 
text the expression “secundum viam naturae” and its equivalents seem to be understood by St 
Thomas as opposed to the notion of supernatural intervention (see below, n. 18), the correspond- 
ing expressions in Averroes refer to the Aristotelian contrast of the natural with the violent — 
“neque naturaliter, neque secundum violentiam” (In VIII Phys., comm. 82 (Venice, 1562), 
fol. 430r1G; cf. comm. 32, fol. 371rb) — or to the exigencies of the thing’s substantial nature: 
“Unde videmus Aristotelem opinari quod corpus caeleste non potest ex se, secundum suam 


78 1. OWENS 


_ But does not this reasoning presuppose that everywhere existence is 
something uncaused by an external agent ? Does it not look upon existence 
everywhere, even in things capable of non-existence, as a fixed and stable 
form aptly designated as a “something” ? If so, it fits well enough into the 
Aristotelian framework of being, as continued in Averroes. St Thomas can 
then say easily enough that “secundum Commentatorem” there is no 
inconsistency in maintaining that in the course of nature a heavenly body 
can receive perpetuity of motion but not perpetuity of existence from some- 
thing else. But does not St Thomas seem to mean more than that? Does 
he not seem to approve the latter part in concluding that as Averroes says 
— ut ipse dixit — a thing capable of non-existence cannot naturally acquire 
perpetuity of existence from anything else? And finally, what is the pur- 
pose of adding this rider to an argument that seemingly would be complete 
and satisfactory without it ? 

No answer to these questions is found in the immediate context. The 
discussion of the objection in regard to which they occur ends here. The 
Contra Gentiles at once goes on to consider another and different objection. 
The prededing context could allow the interpretation that motion is of 
its nature fluid, while existence of its nature is stable. Where existence 
is found as a nature, that is, where it subsists, it may be expected to show 
absolute contrast to the fluidity of motion. Likewise in eviternal things it 
should exhibit this contrast to motion, since motion is what is measured 
by time. But in temporal things, where existence flows from past through 
present to future, how can this contrast to motion be upheld ? Yet for the 
force of argument, in the setting of Aquinas’ own doctrine, the contrast 
would have to hold in the existence of material things. The presence of 
matter in their substance is what gives temporal things their capacity for 
non-existence,'® and precisely in regard to things that of themselves have 


naturam recipere transmutationem, et quod causa eius est, quia non componitur ex materia 
et forma, et quod necessarium est ex se, non ex alio, ut Avicenna dixit.” Jn VIII Phys., comm. 
83, fol. 432ra-b). Cf: “nisi esset possibile ut natura eius transmutaretur.” Jn XII Metaph. 
comm. 41, fol. 324v2 (K). “ ... ut id, quod non habet naturam essendi aeternum, acquirat 
aeternitatem ab alio. Et totum hoc est impossibile. Natura enim generabilis, et corruptibilis, 
non recipit aeternitatem ab alio.” De Subst. Orbis, c. 1; fol. 5vb (K). 

14 CG, I, 20, Et ideo. Cf. above, n. 10. 

15 In the heavenly bodies no capability for substantial change was recognized: “... per hoc 
quod in materia non sit potentia ad aliam formam, sed tota materiae possibilitas ad unam 
formam terminetur; sicut est in corporibus caelestibus, in quibus non est formarum contrarie- 
De Pot., V, 3c. Otherwise, bodies are capable of non-existence: “I!lae ergo solae res in 
sua natura possibilitatem habent ad non esse, in quibus est materia contrarietati subiecta. Aliis 
vero rebus secundum suam naturam competit necessitas essendi, possibilitate non essendi ab 
earum natura sublata.” Ibid. On the immediate background in Avicenna and Averroes, see 
above, n. 8. 


35 


tas 


AQUINAS — EXISTENTIAL PERMANENCE AND FLUX 79 


this capacity for non-existence the conclusion is drawn. They cannot in 
the course of nature acquire perpetuity of existence from anything else. 
More seriously still, the force of the argument seems to reside in the con- 
sideration that motion is continually coming from an external efficient 
cause while existence is not. This is readily applicable to the heavenly 
bodies in an Aristotelian metaphysics, but hardly in the existential meta- 
physics of Aquinas. For Aquinas all existence that is not subsistent, and 
accordingly all eviternal and all temporal existence, is being continually 
imparted by the first efficient cause. Just as aptly as motion it may be 
regarded as a defluxus from an efficient cause into an effect.1° Is there any 
other discussion of the Averroistic contrast that will clarify Aquinas’ per- 
sonal attitude towards it ? 
A somewhat longer discussion of the topic does occur in the Commentary 
on the Physics” The position of Averroes is stated in its basic lines: 
. impossibile est quod aliquid acquirat perpetuitatem essendi ab aliquo 
quia sequeretur quod id quod in se est corruptibile fieret aeternim. Sed 


perpetuitatem motus potest aliquid acquirere ab altero: eo quod motus est 
actus mobilis a movente (no. 2487). 


The reason why something mobile can acquire perpetuity of movement 
from another emerges clearly enough from these words. Movement is an 
actuality that comes from a movent. If the movent keeps imparting the 
motion perpetually, it accounts for the unceasing duration. But why will 
not the same hold in regard to existence ? Why could not an external cause 
keep imparting existence to the thing forever? The reason reported 
for the Averroistic tenet is that what in itself is perishable would become 
eternal. On Scriptural grounds'® the notion that something perishable can 
be made imperishable by divine omnipotence is a Christian belief, and 
accepted by Aquinas. Without qualification, the reason as given can hardly 
be convincing for him. Moreover, he is in general agreement with Averroes 
that while sublunar bodies are in themselves perishable, the heavenly 
bodies are not.!® Yet the whole bearing of the present discussion is on the 
heavenly bodies. Granted that the heavenly bodies did receive existence 


ἐς 


16 So eviternal duration results from an influxus: “... recipiunt durationem ex influxu primi 
principii.” ST, I, 10, 6c. In general, the action of an efficient cause on the passum may be 
called an influxus: “sicut id quod est in actu, agit in id quod est in potentia; et huiusmodi actio 
dicitur influxus.” Quodl., III, 7c. 

1? In VIII Phys., lect. 21, Angeli-Pirotta, nos. 2486-2498. 

18 «τς αὐ non excludamus omnipotentiam Dei per quam corruptibile hoc potest induere incorrup- 
tionem: quod nunc discutere ad propositum non pertinet.” Jbid., no. 2494. The Scriptural 
passage is I Cor., 15, 53. 

19 See above, n. 8. 


80 J- OWENS 


from something else, and that the existence was perpetual, how would the 
conclusion follow for either Averroes or Aquinas that something perishable 
in itself would become eternal ἢ The conclusion could not follow. Yet that 
is the consequence brought forward to show the impossibility of acquiring 
perpetual existence from an external agent. Is the basic force of the reason, 
then, to be found rather in the Aristotelian metaphysical view that the 
heavens are eternal and ingenerate, in the sense that they cannot receive 
existence at all? In this setting, the question of receiving perpetuity of 
existence from another could arise only in the case of sublunar bodies. It 
would seem meant to bypass the tenet that all created existence comes from 
a first cause. 

This Aristotelian background seems in fact to be the operative consider- 
ation as the reason of Averroes is spelled out in the immediately following 
lines. The reason means that the heavenly bodies do not need to acquire 
perpetuity of existence from something else. Does not this presuppose that 
they are regarded as having it already, of themselves? The question of 
acquiring it, then, would be limited to things that are generated and are 
capable of perishing. No such capacity is present in the heavenly bodies: 

Dicit ergo, quod in corpore caelesti, quantum est de se, non est aliqua po- 
tentia ad non esse, quia eius substantiae non est aliquid contrarium; sed in 
ipso est aliqua potentia ad quietem, quia motui eius contrariatur quies. Et 


inde est, quod non indiget acquirere perpetuitatem essendi ab alio, sed per- 
petuitatem motus ab alio acquirere indiget.%° 


The last sentence states clearly enough that a heavenly body needs to 
acquire perpetuity of movement from something else, but not perpetuity 
of existence. The basis for the assertion about movement was that movement 
comes from something else. Is not the parallel presupposition, then, that 
the existence of the heavenly bodies does not come from something else ? 
If St Thomas is understanding the situation in this way, do not his reports 
make an entirely consistent picture? He adds (nos. 2490-2491) some 
sharp criticisms of the Averroistic constitution of the heavenly bodies, and 
insists that even if one could admit this way of conceiving them they would 
still be potentialities for existence: 


Onnnis ergo substantia quae est post primam substantiam simplicem participat 
esse. Omime autem participans componitur ex participante et participato, 
et participans est in potentia ad participatum. Ergo substantia quantum- 
cumque simplex post primam substantiam simplicem est potentia essendi 


(no. 2491). 


20 In VIII Phys., lect. 21, no. 2488. Cf. Averroes: “... ipsum existens per se, absque eo quod 
aliud largiatur ipsi permanentiam, et aeternitatem, ...” De Subst. Orbis, c. 2 ; fol. 6vb (K). 


AQUINAS — EXISTENTIAL PERMANENCE AND FLUX 81 


This means unmistakably that the heavenly bodies receive their existence 
from the primary simple substance, God. St Thomas can allow no other 
way of understanding the existence of created things within the framework 
of his own metaphysical thought. For the purposes of argument he can 
grant for the moment the Averroistic notion of the constitution of the 
heavenly bodies, and still make the reservation from his own viewpoint 
that a celestial body is a potentiality for the reception of existence from 
something else. He insists that Averroes was a victim of deception by the 
multisignificant character of potentiality, for sometimes potentiality is 
open to opposites and at other times it is not: “Deceptus autem fuit per 
aequivocationem potentiae. Nam potentia quandoque se habet ad opposita. 
... Non enim omnis potentia est oppositorum” (no. 2492). Does not this 
mean that Averroes is completely missing a type of potentiality that is 
present in the heavenly bodies ? True, the heavenly bodies have no potenti- 
ality for non-existence. In that, Aquinas is in full agreement with Averroes 
against Avicenna. Yet because they receive their existence from God, 
they are potentialities for existence. Is not the implication here that to 
deny them potentiality to existence is to deny that they have received their 
existence from another ? Does it not mean that the Averroistic tenet in- 
volves the non-creation of the heavenly bodies, that it regards them as 
existent of themselves while moved by another ? 

In point of fact, St Thomas alleges inconsistency in this tenet with the 
doctrine of Averroes as expressed elsewhere: 


Omne enim quod non est suum esse participat esse a causa prima, quae est 
suum esse. Unde et ipse confitetur in libro de Substantia Orbis, quod Deus 
est causa caeli non solum quantum ad motum cius, sed etiam quantum ad 
substantiam ipsius; quod non est nisi quia ab eo habet esse. Non autem 
habet ab eo esse nisi perpetuum. Habet ergo perpetuitatem ab alio. Et in 
hoc etiam consonant verba eius, qui dicit in V Metaphys., et supra in principio 
huius Octavi, quod quaedam sunt necessaria quae habent causam suae ne- 
cessitatis. 

Hoc ergo supposito, plana est solutio secundum intentionem Alexandri, 
quod sicut corpus caeleste habet moveri ab alio, ita et esse. 


From this viewpoint, therefore, the reception of motion and the reception 
of existence are on the same footing. That is the conclusion Aquinas 


21“ |. dicit ipsum esse materiam actu existentem et formam eius dicit animam ipsius; ita 
tamen quod non constituatur in esse per formam, sed solum in moveri.” St Thomas, In VIII 
Phys., lect. 21, no. 2489. Cf. Averroes, De Subst. Orbis, cf. 2; fol. 7rb (E). The expression 
“materia existens in actu” may be seen in the text cited from the De Subst. Orbis, above, n. 12. 

22 See texts above, nn. 8 and 15. 

28 In VII Phys., lect. 21, nos. 2495-2496. On Averroes’ acceptance of “omnis res est cor- 
ruptibilis praeter faciem eius,” as taught by the Koran, see De Subst. Orbis, c. 7; fol. 14rb-v2. 


82 J. OWENS 


approves, a conclusion that is the opposite of the Averroistic tenet here, 
yet, Aquinas claims, the conclusion required by the teaching of Averroes 
elsewhere. Again, St Thomas seems to be understanding the Averroistic 
tenet here as implying that just as the heavenly bodies cannot receive 
perpetuity of existence from another, they cannot receive existence itself 
from another. In a word, they are here regarded as independently existent. 
That is the implication of this viewpoint. 

From other viewpoints, however, there are in a heavenly body differences 
between potentiality for motion and potentiality for existence. First, 
potentiality for motion is open to opposites, and even in the heavenly bodies 
to locations that are opposite (no. 2497), while potentiality for existence 
need not be potentiality for non-existence. More important for the present 
considerations, a further difference is that movement is of its very nature 
temporal, while existence, though it can be temporal, is so only insofar as 
it is conditioned by movement: 

Nam motus secundum se cadit in tempore, esse vero non cadit in tempore, 
sed solum secundum quod subiacet motui. Si ergo sit aliquod esse quod 
non subiacet motui, illud esse nullo modo cadit sub tempore. Potentia ergo 
quae est ad moveri in tempore infinito respicit infinitatem temporis directe 
et per se; sed potentia quae est ad esse tempore infinito, si quidem illud esse 
sit transmutabile, respicit quantitatem temporis; et ideo maior virtus re- 
quiritur ad hoc quod aliquid duret in esse transmutabili maiori tempore. 
Sed potentia quae est respectu esse intransmutabilis, nullo modo respicit 


quantitatem temporis; unde magnitudo vel infinitas temporis nihil facit ad 
infinitatem vel magnitudinem potentiae respectu talis esse.%4 


In the context of the present discussion, accordingly, there is full room 
for a type of existence that is changeable and conditioned by temporal 
extension. This should mean that it never remains fixed or still, but is 
always progressing towards the future. It is possible in the context, there- 
fore, to hold that existence is of itself fixed and still, and yet as found in 
material things is incessantly changing. 

How does this discussion of the same topic in the Commentary on the Physics 
affect the interpretation of the passage in the Contra Gentiles? First of all, 
it shows satisfactorily that St Thomas is not accepting the stand that the 
perpetual motion of the heavens is caused while their perpetual existence 
is not caused. This stand he unhesitatingly refuses to admit. But according 


24 In VIII Phys., lect. 21, no. 2498. Cf: cum esse illud invariabile non attingatur a tempore 
nisi per accidens.” CG, I, 20, Et ideo (no, 3). This philosophical conception of the respective 
kinds of duration makes clear the rationale of the traditional Christian custom of praying for 
people long dead — there is no reason why a moment of time now or decades later should not 
be equally contemporary with an eviternal situation. 


AQUINAS — EXISTENTIAL PERMANENCE AND FLUX 83 


to Averroes, the text runs,?> perpetuity of movement may be received from 
something else, though not perpetuity of existence. In contrast to existence, 
the motion as an influx from the movent is not possessed by the mobile thing 
on its own strength. Does not this contrast indicate that St Thomas is 
projecting his assertion into a setting in which the existent in question — 
here the heavenly body — has existence of itself 2? The text in the Contra 
Gentiles (1, 20, Procedit) runs: “perpetuitatem motus, quam non habet de 
se. Esse autem est aliquid fixum et quietum in ente...” Does not this 
contrast strongly suggest that instead of an influx that a thing does not 
have of itself, existence is something fixed and still that it does have of 
itself ? Ifso, Aquinas is not giving any personal commitment to the assertion, 
but is merely continuing his report of Averroes’ reasoning. It is reasoning 
that fits neatly enough into the Aristotelian metaphysics, in which the 
heavens were ingenerate. Their motion, accordingly, would be an influx 
into them from an efficient cause. Their existence, in contrast, would 
be something fixed and stable in them, without coming from any external 
agent. 

That Aquinas for the sake of argument is able to put himself into the 
position of his adversary for the moment has already been noted.2* That 
he can so allow the position just considered is shown in the conclusion of the 
discussion in the Commentary on the Physics: 

Dato ergo per impossibile, quod corpus caeleste non haberet esse ab allio, 
adhuc non potest ex perpetuitate ipsius concludi quod in eo esset virtus 
infinita.?’ 


If this is the case, why can he not in the Contra Gentiles be merely reporting 
a presupposition of the Averroistic reasoning when he calls existence some- 
thing fixed and stable in the existent ? The conclusion follows then, as 
Averros says, that what of itself is capable of non-existence cannot acquire 
perpetuity of existence from another, in the course of nature: “et ideo quod 
de se est in potentia ad non esse, non potest, ut ipse dicit, secundum viam 
naturae acquirere ab alio perpetuitatem essendi” (CG, I, 20, Procedit). 
In this interpretation the notion “aliquid fixum et quietum in ente” 
would express strict opposition to any “defluxus a movente.” Motion has 
to be caused by an outsider, existence does not have this requirement. So 
if a thing is of itself capable of non-existence, the influence of an outsider 
cannot change this condition. Unlike motion, which of its nature depends 
upon an efficient cause, existence as something fixed and settled rises above 


25 CG, I, 20, Procedit. Cf. In VII Phys., lect. 21, no. 2487, and Averroes text above, n. 7. 
26 Above, n. 21. 
27 In VIII Phys., lect. 21, no. 2498. Gf CG, I, 20, Et ideo. 


84 J. OWENS 


any such dependence. It cannot in the natural order of things be made per- 
petual by the working of an external cause. The opposition here is clearly 
between the traditional Greek conceptions of becoming and being. Be- 
coming is flux, being is the definitely fixed and permanent. 

In its context, accordingly, the lone statement of St Thomas that existence 
is something fixed and stable allows itself to be read frankly as the presup- 
position of an Averroistic tenet. Yet one hesitates to believe that this is the 
whole story. Each of the premises in the above reasoning seems worded in 
a way that would make it acceptable to St Thomas himself. Would he 
have any hesitation in agreeing that existence is of its nature something 
eternally stable ? Where existence is found as a nature, namely in God, it 
is something eternally unchangeable. Likewise is he not in full accord with 
the stand that a material element open to other forms makes a substance 
contingent, that is, capable of non-existence ? He is able to maintain this 
as holding in the natural course of things, even with the reservation, 
irrelevant for the present consideration, that supernaturally a perishable 
body may be rendered imperishable.2® But can these premises, in the sense 
in which he himself accepts them, justify the conclusion that there is no 
natural way in which existence can be imparted in perpetuity to a material 
thing in the sublunar world? If for St Thomas existence in all creatures 
has to be imparted just as motion has to be, why cannot a material thing, 
like the corpse of Lenin, be given perpetual existence through the activity 
of an efficient cause? Ina word, is the Averroistic tenet defensible also in 
the framework of Aquinas’ own metaphysical thought ? 


Ii 


The answer to this question obviously calls for a glance at the overall 
metaphysical view of St Thomas in regard to the main issues at stake. In 
the Commentary on the Sentences, a discussion of the type of duration found in 
eternity uses the parallelism of movement as the actuality of the mobile 
thing, and existence as the actuality of the existent insofar as it is being: 
“Sicut autem motus est actus ipsius mobilis inquantum mobile est; ita esse 
est actu existentis, inquantum ens est.” Immediately before this statement, 
a mobile thing was shown to vary in its existence as moment succeeds mo- 
ment in time: 


+» sicut est idem mobile secundum substantiam in toto motu, variatum 
tamen secundum esse, sicut dicitur quod Socrates in foro est alter a seipso 


°8 See above, ἢ. 18. 


AQUINAS — EXISTENTIAL PERMANENCE AND FLUX 85 


in domo; ita nunc est etiam idem secundum substantiam in tota successione 
temporis, variatum tantum secundum esse, scilicet secundum rationem quam 
accepit prioris et posterioris.?° 


Duration had already been shown to take place according as something 
is in actuality, and therefore differs in correspondence to the different ways 
in which a thing is actual: 


Duratio autem omnis attenditur secundum quod aliquid est in actu: tamdiu 
enim res durare dicitur quamdiu in actu est, et nondum est in potentia. Esse 
autem in actu contingit dupliciter. Aut secundum hoc quod actus ille est 
incompletus, et potentiae permixtus, ratione cujus ulterius in actum procedit, 
et talis actus est motus; ... Aut secundum quod actus non est permixtus po- 
tentiae, nec additionem recipiens perfectionis; et talis actus est actus quietus 
et permanens.*° 


The force of the adjective guietus becomes apparent from this text. It 
implies permanent actuality, in contrast to the flux of motion. It means 
that the actuality is not mixed with potentiality, that it is not incomplete, 
that it is not receiving any addition of perfection. But there are two ways 
in which a thing can be in this type of actuality: 


Esse autem in tali actu contingit dupliciter. Vel ita quod ipsum esse actu, 
quod res habet, sit sibi acquisitum ab alio; et tunc res habens tale esse est 
potentialis respectu hujus actus, quem tamen perfectum accepit. Vel esse 
actu est rei ex seipsa, ita quod est de ratione quidditatis suae; et tale esse est 
esse divinum, in quo non est aliqua potentialitas respectu hujus actus.* 


29 In I Sent., ἃ. 19, q. 2, a. 2, Solut.; I, 470. In the Aristotelian source, Pé., IV 11, 219b18-23, 
“the sophists assume that Coriscus’ being in the Lyceum is a different thing from Coriscus’ being 
in the market-place” (Oxford tr.). “Being” here quite obviously refers to the accident of place, 
for which the examples given in the Categories, 4, 2al-2, are “in the Lyceum” and “in the market 
place.” In St Thomas (loc. cit.), however, esse is here expressly pinpointed to the “actus existen- 
tis, inquantum ens est.” 

30 In I Sent., ἃ. 19, q. 2, a. 1, Solut.; I, 466-467. Cf: “... ad significandum quietem divini 
esse; illud enim dicimus possidere, quod quiete et plene habemus.” Ibid., d. 8, q. 2, a. 1, ad 6m; 
I, 203.” “... et quia illi sunt in plena participatione aeternae lucis, et quietis, et aeternitatis, 
ideo decet caelum empyreum lucidum, immobile et incorruptibile esse.” In II Sent., ἃ. 2, q. 2, 
a. 2, Solut.; II, 73. 

In accord with the Aristotelian background, the actuality from which the discussion starts 
jis movement. It is this actuality that is shown to be variable and successive in nature. It con- 
ditions the existence of temporal things correspondingly; see texts above, nn. 4 and 24, and 
below, τ. 35. Cf.: “Quaedam autem sic recedunt a permanentia essendi, quod esse corum est 
subiectum transmutationis, vel in transmutatione consistit; et huiusmodi mensurantur tempore, 
sicut omnis motus, et etiam esse omnium corruptibilium.” ST, I, 10, 5c. See also ST, I, 9, 2, 
ad 3m; De Ver., XXI, 4, ad 7m (text below, n. 45). 

31 In I Sent., ἃ. 19, q. 2, a. 1, Solut.; I, 467. That the existence of God is “de ratione quiddi- 
tatis suae” is protected in advance against the Cartesian notion of “causa sui.” Though the term 
“cause” might be used in this connection, it can hardly meet with full approval: “Posset etiam 


86 . J. OWENS 


The duration corresponding to the divine being, the text goes on, is 
eternity. The duration corresponding to existence that is received into 
a potentiality as a perfect or complete actuality, is not eternity but eviter- 
nity. Even though a thing might have existence without beginning and 
without end, it still would not be eternal if the existence were received 
from an efficient cause.*? Finally, the duration corresponding to existence 
conditioned by motion is time: 


τι tempus per se est mensura motus primi; unde esse rerum temporalium non 
mensuratur tempore nisi prout subjacet variationi ex motu caeli. Unde dicit 
Commentator, IV Physic., quod sentimus tempus, secundum quod percipi- 
mus nos esse in esse variabili ex motu caeli.*4 


dici, quamvis non ita bene, quod causa communiter accipitur pro omni eo quod est etiam 
prius secundum rationem: cum enim essentia divina secundum intellectum sit prius quam esse 
suum, et esse prius quam aeternitas, sicut mobile est prius motu, et motus prior tempore; dicetur 
ipse Deus esse causa suae aeternitatis secundum modum intelligendi, quamvis ipse sit sua acter- 
nitas secundum rem.” Jbid., ad Im; p. 468. 

32 “Aeviternity” -and “aeviternal”? are obsolete words in English, while “aevum,” though 
used, has never been naturalized; see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Eviternity,” however, is 
recognized without qualification. This would seem to require, in technical discussion, the re- 
vival of the adjective “eviternal.” The root notion of the Latin aevum is duration; see Ernout- 
Meillet, Dict. Etym., s.v. On the medieval understanding of the term, cf.: “Et dicta aetas, quasi 
aevitas, id est similitudo aevi. Nam aevum est aetas perpetua, cuius neque initium neque ex- 
tremum noscitur, quod Graeci vocant αἰῶρας; quod aliquando apud eos pro saeculo, aliquando 
pro aeterno ponitur.” Isidore of Seville, Etymol., V, 38, 4. Of. “ab aevo dictus, id est ab anti- 
quitate.” Ibid., IX, 5, 9. 

33 In I Sent., d. 19, q. 2, a. 1, Solut.; I, 466. The distinction, as seen by St Thomas, is rooted 
in his metaphysical notion of existence. He is well aware that the distinction is not traditional: 
“non inveniuntur auctores antiqui multum curasse de differentia aevi et aeternitatis.” Ibid., 
ad 1m, p. 468. “... doctores parum loquuntur de differentia aevi et aeternitatis.” Jn IT Sent., 
d. 2, q. 1, a. 1, Solut.; II, 64. 

34 In I Sent., ἃ. 19, q- 2, a. 1, ad 4m; I, 469. The type of intellection by which the esse variabile 
is originally grasped is for St Thomas the activity of judgment, not that of conceptualization. 
As the apprehension or understanding that something exists, judgment is for him a synthesizing 
cognitive activity that knows by synthesizing and that synthesizes by knowing. It is accord- 
ingly a type of intellection that corresponds in structure to the ever changing synthesis in which 
the existence of temporal things consists. The Thomistic texts in this regard may be found 
gathered in my article “Diversity and Community of Being in St Thomas Aquinas,” Mediaeval 
Studies, 22 (1960), 284-295. The importance of grasping that the fact that something exists is 
the existential actuality of the thing, the component that actuates the essence, can hardly be 
overstated. L. Sweeney, in The Modern Schoolman, 45 (1968), 146, states that the term existence 
“can stand for the component just mentioned, but it also can directly signify merely the fact 
that something does exist.” Yet in both cases the term is standing for the same actuality. “That 
something does exist” expresses the actuality in the way it was originally grasped through judg- 
ment. Existential “component,” existential actuality or perfection, and other notions signified 
by simple terms, express the same actuality as it is subsequently conceptualized by the intellect 
for purposes of discourse and communication. For another attempt to read a distinction between 


AQUINAS —— EXISTENTIAL PERMANENCE AND FLUX 87 


St Thomas, in accord with the formulae established by the Aristotelian 
text, speaks regularly of time as the measure of motion. Yet, as can be 
seen from the above text, he understands this to imply that the existence 
of temporal things is measured by time, insofar as their existence is con- 
ditioned by the regular motion caused in sublunar things by the heavens. 
The reason can be seen in the way existence is determined and specified by 
the potentiality into which it is received: : 

. sicut esse, secundum rationem intelligendi, consequitur principia ipsius 


entis quasi causas; ita etiam mensura entis se habet ad mensuram essendi 
secundum rationem causae (ibid., a. 2, ad 3m; I, 472). 


Accordingly time measures existence insofar as existence varies through 
motion: 

In materia autem prima secundum essentiam non est aliqua multitudo, sed 

solum secundum esse, et secundum hoc esse non est una in pluribus; unde 

nec tempus materiae secundum essentiam suam respondet, sed. solum esse, 


secundum quod variatur per motum (In II Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 2, Solut.; 
II, 67). 


In this continuous variation the “now” that measures the existent®* 15 
always flowing: 

. ‘nunc’ numquam intelligitur ut stans, sed semper ut fluens; non autem 
ut fluens a priori, nisi motus praecedat, sed in posterius; nec iterum in poste- 
rius, sed a priori, nisi motus sequatur. Unde si nunquam sequeretur vel 
praecederet motus, ‘nunc’ non esset ‘nunc’; et hoc patet in motu parti- 


culari, qui sensibiliter incipit, cujus quodlibet momentum est fluens, ... (ibid., 
d. 1, g. 1, a. 5, ad 6m; II, 35). 


What these passages make clear is that the notion quietus when applied 
to existence expresses the perfect and complete possession of an actuality, 
as in God and in the eviternal beings. It is directly contrasted with tempo- 
ral existence, existence conditioned by motion, going on to further perfec- 
tion, but always incomplete and imperfect in itself. Temporal existence 
always lacks something of itself: “Esse autem nostrum habet aliquid sui 
extra se: deest enim aliquod quod jam de ipso praeteriit, et quod futurum 
est” (In I Sent., ἃ. 8, q. 1, a. 1, Solut.; 1, 195). Against this background, is 
there any possibility that the statement of the Contra Gentiles, “esse autem 
est aliquid fixum et quietum in ente,” should apply to temporal existence ? 
Rather, is not its bearing restricted to existence that is invariable, as in the 
heavens ? 


“bare factuality” and “the actuality of all acts,” see Vincent P. Branick, “The Unity of the Divine 
Ideas,” The New Scholasticism, 42 (1968), 193. 

35 “Unde quacumque mensura mensuretur esse alicujus rei, ipsi rei existenti respondet nunc 
ipsius durationis, quasi mensura.” In I Sent., d. 19, q. 2, a. 2, Solut.; I, 470-471. 


88 J. OWENS 


Provision for this restricted application seems to have been made in the 
preceding context of the Contra Gentiles: “Esse autem non habet aliquam 
extensionem quantitatis: praecipue in re cuius esse est invariabile, sicut 
caelum” (I, 20, Et ideo). In contrast to motion, then, existence of its 
nature is something unchangeable. It is not of itself a flux, as is motion, 
and accordingly does not call for the quantitative extension of a flux. Where 
it is found in its own nature, in God, it is invariable and eternal. Where 
it is found in an imperishable nature, as in angels or the heavens, it follows 
the condition of that nature; it is invariable and eviternal. Is not this 
sufficient for the statement that existence does not have quantitative exten- 
sion, understanding the statement to apply principally to eternal and 
eviternal beings ? Does it not justify the unqualified assertion that existence 
is something fixed and stable in the existent ἢ That is what existence in its 
own nature indicates. But it leaves room for another type of existence, 
existence conditioned by motion and measured by time. Existence, in 
a word, is participated in accord with the potentiality in which it is received. 
Where this potentiality is changeable, the existence itself will be subject to 
variation. 


IV 


But if for St Thomas truth is based upon existence,** how can there be 
any stable truth in temporal things ? Will truth in them likewise have to 
be fluid, always changing, never remaining the same? Would not this 
ruin all possibility of rational discourse and of speech, as Plato showed in 
the Parmenides (135 BC) ? Would it not be self-destructive as a positive, 
overall assertion? In point of fact the answer of Aquinas, given in the 
framework of existence that has just been studied, seems to go further than 
this in extending the changing nature of truth even to the eviternal order. 
In creatures, he asserts, there patently is no necessary truth: 

Similiter de mutabilitate veritatis idem dicendum est quod de mutabilitate 
essendi; ut enim supra dictum est, simpliciter immutabile non est nisi esse 
divinum; unde simpliciter immutabilis veritas non est nisi una, scilicet 
divina. Esse autem aliarum rerum quarumdam dicitur mutabile mutatione 
variabilitatis, sicut est in contingentibus ; et horum etiam veritas mutabilis 


est et contingens. Quorumdam vero esse est mutabile solum secundum verti- 
bilitatem in nihil, si sibi relinqueretur; et horum veritas similiter mutabilis 


36 “Cum enim ratio veritatis in actione compleatur intellectus, et fundamentum habeat ip- 
sum esse rei; judicium de veritate sequitur judicium de esse rei et de intellectu.” In I Sent., d. 
19, q. 5, a. 3, Solut.; I, 495. On stable truth in propositions, see De Ver., I, 6, ad 2m and ad 
4m. 


AQUINAS —— EXISTENTIAL PERMANENCE AND FLUX 89 


est per vertibilitatem in nihil, si 5101 relinqueretur. Unde patet quod nulla 
veritas est necessaria in creaturis.*” 


Truth, this text maintains, follows the condition of the existence on which 
it is based. In contingent things, that is, sublunar things that have matter 
as a substantial principle, the existence is changeable in the sense of “varia- 
ble.” “Variable” in this context is contrasted with the type of change 
possible for eviternal things. It refers to existence that is conditioned by 
time and measured by motion, as has been already seen.** 

Even things that are necessary beings but have a cause of their necessi- 
ty,®° are unable to ground necessary truth. The inference from this would 
be that “necessary existence” applies only to existence that subsists. There 
existence itselfis the nature. Other things, in spite of their status as necessa- 
ry beings because they lack matter for change, do not have necessary 
existence. Their existence is changeable, in the sense just outlined. Corre- 
spondingly their truth is changeable, for it is grounded on their existence. 

Nevertheless, the notions formed by the mind are imperishable and 
eternal: 

Sicut enim dicimus de universalibus, quod sunt incorruptibilia et aeternat 
quia non corrumpuntur nisi per accidens, scilicet quantum ad esse quod haben, 
in alio, quod potest non esse ; ita etiam est de veritate et falsitate, quod con- 
sideratae secundum intentiones suas, non accidit eis corruptio per se, sed 
solum secundum esse quod habent in alio (In I Sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 3, ad 3m ; 
I, 496-497). 

The notions (intentiones) that the mind abstracts from variable things, 
then, may be regarded as imperishable and even as eternal. The same holds 
for truth and falsehood in general. They exist in a mind, and can lose that 
existence if the mind ceases to exist or stops thinking about them. But as 
universal, they rise above the limitations of temporal or eviternal existence. 
It is in that sense that they make possible rational discourse and speech. 
The essential determination of essence by form, then, allows full scope for 
truth as something fixed and stable in perishable things. The determining 
form is sufficient to ground universality and permanence in the midst of 
temporal flux. 

From one point of view, then, truth in contingent things is historical. 
It is based upon existence that varies in time, and that accordingly gives 
it its historicity. From another standpoint, however, one always has to 


37 Ibid., pp. 495-496. On the notion “vertibilitas in nihil,” see In I Sent., ἃ. 8, q. 3, a. 2, 
Solut.; I, 214. 

38 See above, nn. 29, 30, 34 and 35. 

39 See above, nn. 8 and 13. 


90 J. OWENS 


philosophize above time. Any reasoning process, any rational discourse, 
any communication through speech, depends upon the universal. It is 
characterized by something that rises above the limitations of space and 
time. The ultimate reason for this is that a nature in its absolute conside- 
ration antecedes any created existence, real or cognitional.© Relations 
among concepts are no exception: “Ideo enim Socrates est rationalis, quia 
homo est rationalis, et non e converso; unde dato quod Socrates et Plato 
non essent, adhuc humanae naturae rationalitas competeret” (Quodl., 
VIII, 1c). There is little difficulty is seeing how this doctrine can be exten- 
ded to any conditionalized proposition. Every essence, in a word, deter- 
mines its existence in a definite kind, no matter how flowing the existence 
may be. 


Vv 


To return to the interpretation of the statement that existence is some- 
thing fixed and stable in the existent, the adhesion of St Thomas himself 
to it may now be probed in the light of the foregoing considerations. 
Clearly existence is for him something stable and unchangeable in its own 
nature, even though it is found as a nature only in God. Just as clearly 
he is in agreement with Averroes that anything of itself capable of non- 
existence cannot acquire perpetuity of existence from another, if the condi- 
tion “in the course of nature” is added. But how can he make his own the 
inference that because esixtence is something fixed and stable a contingent 
thing cannot acquire perpetual existence from another ? 

The contrasted situation with motion is easy enough to understand. 
Motion is something that of its nature has to flow from another. Ifa sub- 
stance has perpetual existence, as in the case of a heavenly body, what is 
there against its receiving motion perpetually from an external cause ? 
Whether its perpetual existence is caused or uncaused, is beside the point 
for the moment. The proposition that it can receive perpetual motion from 
another is acceptable to both Aquinas and Averroes. Motion is of its 
nature a flux. There is nothing in its nature to keep it from going on forever. 
Accordingly there is no reason why it may not be received perpetually from 
a movent. : 

But does the fixity and stability of existence justify equally well in both 
thinkers the conclusion that anything with potentiality in itself for non- 
existence cannot receive existence perpetually from another? In the 
Aristotelian setting there is no problem. Being, in contrast to becoming, 


40 Quodl., VIII, 1c. Cf. ibid., ad 3m. 


AQUINAS — EXISTENTIAL PERMANENCE AND FLUX 91 


is caused by form." Form is something definite and terminal. It may readi- 
ly be called fixed and stable. Where the form can be lost on account of 
the potentiality of the matter in which it inheres, the composite is able to 
lose its being. No further problem of existence arises in this context. The 
type of form is determined and stable in its exigencies for its appropriate 
matter. If the appropriate matter renders the composite capable of peri- 
shing, no external cause can change that condition of its nature. Know- 
ledge of entropy or of atomic incineration was not needed to establish the 
conclusion that given all possible circumstances the matter would some 
time lose the one form and take on another. In the nature of things no 
efficient cause could prevent this. The position (sicut ponebatur) of Averroes, 
accordingly, was that nothing capable of non-existence could acquire 
perpetuity of existence from another. 

In St Thomas, concomitantly, existence where not subsisting as a nature 
requires determination by the potentiality that receives it? Even though 
it is being imparted by an efficient cause, it retains the specification given 
it by the essence it actuates. If that is an essence with potentiality for 
substantial change, as in sublunar things, it stamps the condition of con- 
tingency upon the existence. In the natural course of things circumstances 
will come about in which the composite will perish. In nature there is no 
way of its receiving perpetuity of existence from the causes that conserve 
it. The provision about the course of nature (secundum viam naturae) leaves 
open for St Thomas the possibility that perishable things become imperish- 
able in the supernatural order. With this safeguard, why can he not con- 
clude, from his own conception of the stability of existence, that it is im- 
possible, as Averroes says, for essentially perishable things to receive perpe- 
tual existence from an external cause ? 

The reason for mentioning the subject seems natural enough. In the 
preceding section (CG, 1, 20, Hance autem) Aquinas had been speaking of 
this position of Averroes, that what of itself has possibility for non-existence 
cannot acquire from another the perpetuity of existence. It was a recogniz- 
ed position, and Aquinas agreed with its insights even though his own 
conception of existence differed radically from that of Averroes. A moment 
later Aquinas has occasion to show that a thing can receive perpetuity of 
motion from something else. The parallelism with the doctrine found 
rejected shortly before, in the reasoning of Averroes, could hardly escape 
his mind. Hence the rider is added to make clear that the position of Aver- 
roes may still be respected along with the present tenet about motion. 


41 See Aristotle, Metaph., Z 17, 1041b26-28. Cf. 9, 1034a30-32. 
42 “Unde non sic determinatur esse per aliud sicut potentia per actum, sed magis sicut actus 
per potentiam.” De Pot., VII, 2, ad 9m. Cf. above, ἢ. 4. 


92 J. OWENS 


Yet the Averroistic tenet is respected by St Thomas without the Aver- 
roistic presupposition that a heavenly body has no potentiality for existence, 
but only for location — “est enim in corpore caelesti, secundum Aristote- 
lem, in-VIII Metaph., potentia ad ubi, sed non ad esse.”4 Fully retaining 
his own conception of the heavenly substance as a potentiality for sharing 
in existence, as his longer discussion of the Averroistic tenet makes evident,“ 
St Thomas is able to see a consequence following from the “fixed and stable” 
nature of existence in both ways of thinking. Just as in his use of the Aris- 
totelian argument from motion to show the existence of separate substance, 
so here also he is able to see a skeleton form of reasoning that is valid in 
both contexts, no matter how much the existence parameter varies. Further, 
the “fixed and stable” nature of existence does not prevent it from being 
received into an essentially mobile substance, as in sublunar things. Here 
the existence is variable, and is unhesitatingly named esse transmutabile in 
the discussion of the Averroistic tenet.15 Instead of being terminal, this 
type of existence is always imperfect and incomplete, always going on to 
more, always progressing from past through present into the future. “Esse 
autem est aliquid fixum et quietum in ente” describes well enough the 
nature of existence, and the essential determination of existence by form. 
But in the context in which it was asserted it leaves intact the temporal and 
ever flowing condition of the existence immediately encountered by the 
human kind in the things of the sensible world. 

The meaning of the Thomistic passage, then, seems clear enough. There 
is no inconsistency in the position of Averroes. A thing capable of rest can 
receive perpetual motion, but a thing capable of non-existence cannot 
naturally receive perpetual existence. The reason is given. Motion of its 
nature is always open to continuation by the movent. Existence, on the 
contrary, is in its own nature something already determined. The suppres- 
sed premise is that where existence is received intoa potentiality, it is deter- 
mined by a form. Where the form determines a thing to be material and 
contingent, nothing on the level of nature canrender its existence perpetual. 


Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 


43 CG, I, 20, Hanc autem. Cf. In VIIT Phys., lect. 21, nos. 2496-2497. 

44 In VIII Phys., lect. 21, nos. 2486-2498. See texts above, nn. 17-24. 

45 See text above, n. 24. Cf “Unde secundum quod aliquod esse recedit a permanentia 
essendi et subditur transmutationi, secundum hoc recedit ab aeternitati et subditur tempori. 
Esse ergo rerum corruptibilium, quia est transmutabile, non mensuratur aeternitate, sed tempore. 
Tempus enim mensurat non solum quae transmutantur in actu, sed quae sunt transmutabilia. 
Unde non solum mensurat motum, sed etiam quietem, quae est eius quod natum est moveri, 
et non movetur.” 6.7.1, 10, 4, ad 3m. “Esse autem creaturae dicitur esse per quamdam simili- 
tudinem ad illud primum esse, cum habeat permixtionem eius quod est futurum esse vel fuisse, 
ratione mutabilitatis creaturae.” De Ver., XXI, 4, ad 7m. 


A New Way to God: Henry of Ghent (II) 


ANTON C. PEGIS 


[IF Article 22 of the Summa of Henry of Ghent, written some ten years 

after St. Thomas’ death, is a landmark in the history of natural theo- 
logy, it is surely a perplexing one. The teaching in Article 22 is not per- 
plexing because of the new doctrinal alliance it forges between St. Augustine 
and Avicenna, or between truth and the teaching of Avicenna; nor is it per- 
plexing as aconservative theological reaction against the Averroistic insisten- 
ce that the starting point of all proofs of God is the world of motion and there- 
fore that physics, not metaphysics, is the science that proves the existence of 
God. What is perplexing is how much Henry rejects as inadequate, and 
what he does after his rejection. For in Article 22, Question 5, he rejects 
not only the Aristotelian way to God, but also the a posteriori ways followed 
by St. Augustine: he rejects, in other words, the argument from motion 
in the Physics, leading to a separate prime mover, and the arguments of 
St. Augustine leading to a supreme beauty in the De Vera Religione and 
to a supreme wisdom in the second book of the De Libero Arbitrio. Henry 
certainly acknowledges that these arguments are valid, indeed irrefraga- 
biliter so; but as arguments for God ex testificatione sensibilium they have a 
serious shortcoming: they do not reach God in His uniqueness. This is 
the reason for the new — and Avicennian — proof of God, barely sket- 
ched in Question 5, proceeding, not ex testificatione sensibilium, but ex pro- 
positionibus universalibus2 The new proof is a@ priori, not a posterwori. If, 
like the proofs in Question 4, it is ex sensibilibus creaturis, it is not from the 
testimony of the esse creaturae to the esse det; it is, within the transcendentals, 
from ens hoc and bonum hoc to ens and bonum taken absolutely, God. 

How this metaphysical argumentation works — its modus — Henry of 
Ghent set aside for discussion in Article 25, dealing with the divine unity. 
But the presumed advantages and the historical origins of the new way 
to God — new, at least, in Christian theology as of the last two decades 
of the thirteenth century — are already visible in Article 22, Question 5. 


1 See A. C. Pegis, “Toward a New Way to God: Henry of Ghent” Mediaeval Studies, 30 (1968), 
226-247. 


94 A. C. PEGIS 


The a posteriori arguments of Question 4 had proved that God exists, that 
it is necessary to say Deus est; the a priori argument of Question 5 proves 
that Deus est esse. The whole meaning of the divine transcendence is at 
stake in this difference. Had Aristotle proved more than that the separate 
prime mover was beyond the universe, and that several prime movers were 
possible? Have we, therefore, Henry wonders, a proper sense of deus est when 
the proposition is affirmed a fosteriort from the sensible universe ? Do we 
know thereby that God is one and, what is more decisive, that there is 
only one God? If not, how have we reached God in His true transcen- 
dence ? 

There is little doubt that, in turning away from a fosteriori proofs of 
God, Henry’s main purpose was to avoid the theology in Aristotle’s Phy- 
sics and Metaphysics. Intelligence — and Aristotle’s supreme prime mover 
is an intelligence — is what nature and the heavens need in order to have 
an origin and a model. Even when it is true that he does not know the 
universe, it is equally true that Aristotle’s supreme prime mover is un- 
thinkable without the existence of the universe. As Article 25 will make 
clear, Henry is aware of the limitations of Aristotle’s notion of God — a- 
ware, concerned and even fearful in the name of Christian theology. In 
enabling him, as he thought, to reach an absolute God in an absolute way, 
Avicenna’s Metaphysics offered Henry a philosophical instrument by which 
to purify the Christian theology built by his immediate predecessors of the 
Aristotelian world-view and its limitations. And, writing between 1275 
and 1290, and in the wake of the massive condemnation of 1277, Henry 
followed a perfectly understandable course in seeking to create a synthesis 
in which the Christian God was free of the world of Aristotle. Thomas 
Aquinas had freed Aristotle from Averroes and Avicenna, as well as from 
his own ancient setting, in order to make him a spokesman for philosophi- 
cal truth within Christian theology. The success of the Thomistic under- 
taking depended on freeing the philosophy of Aristotle in general, and the 
Physics in particular, from their historical commitments and limitations; 
it depended on making Aristotelianism into a spokesman for a living philo- 
sophy in the thirteenth century. But, by following the reverse procedure 
and identifying philosophy as such with the work of the historical Aris- 
totle, St. Thomas’ contemporanies prepared the way for the rejection of 
Aristotle and of the Thomistic use of Aristotle. 

What is genuinely puzzling in Henry of Ghent, however, is the precise 
and narrow ground on which, in relation to his predecessors, he has taken 
his stand as a Christian thinker. A proof of God which is ex creaturis but 
not ex testificatione sensibilium is a new Christian phenomenon. Similarly, 
a proof of God that proceeds ex via propositionum universalium intelligibilium 
becomes rather difficult to grasp when Henry carefully adds, in defense 


A NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (II) 95 


of Avicenna against the criticism of Averroes, that we derive these univer- 
sal notions ex sensibilibus creaturis and indeed that non est nobis omnino via ad 
probandum ipsum [God] esse nisi ex sensibilibus, neque etiam ad cognoscendum ip- 
sius naturam et essentiam.2 Or, as Henry says a little later on, his new proof 
“licet non sit testificationis creaturarum, quod eleganter dicit Avicenna, 
ortum tamen sumit a creaturis.”* And if it be asked how the proof takes 
its origin from creatures, the much used text of the De Trinitate of St. 
Augustine contains for Henry the answer. Augustine well answered the 
question when he said in this text: “If, when you hear this good or that 
good, which can on other grounds be called not good, you are able to see 
without the things that are good by participation the good itself by parti- 
cipation in which they are good — for you also understand the good it- 
self when you hear this or that good; if, then, you are able to remove these 
goods and see the good in itself, you will see God.”* As the same Augustine 
said, in the same discussion (2.3), in an even more quoted text: “God is 
truth. When you hear that truth exists, do not ask what truth is. Shadows 
of corporeal images and clouds of phantasms appear before you, and they 
disturb the serenity that shone upon you in the first flash when I said 
‘Truth exists’. Remain in that first flash of light, if you can, by whose ray 
you are touched when truth is spoken; if you cannot, fall back on these 
ordinary earthly things.” But the Augustian text to which Henry of Ghent 
returns again and again in Articles 21 to 25 is the one that he places without 
interruption immediately after this quotation. “But why add more and 
more goods? Behold this good and that good. Take away the this and the 
that, and see the good itself if you can: you will thus see God, who is not 
good by another good, but rather the good of every good.”® 
The interpretation of the Augustinian teaching in these texts is not in 
question here. A reading of the whole discussion (De Trinitate, VIII, 2.3- 
3.5) makes it clear that Augustine’s purpose is not to prove the existence 
of God, of the absolute Truth and Good, but to free himself if he can from 
corporeal images and to contemplate God in His pure transcendence. The 
language of the text is religious and even mystical, and should be read in 
the light of Confessions, VII, 10.16-18.24. However this may be, Henry 
of Ghent both locates the texts from the De Trinitate within the transcen- 
dentals of Avicenna and uses them to elaborate the teaching of Avicenna. 
Consider. There are three ways, Henry argues, in which we can know that 


2 Henry of Ghent, Summa, A. 22, Q. 5, (Paris, 1520), fol. 134rv (B). 

® Ibid.; fol. 135r (E). 

4 St. Augustine, De Trinitate VIII, 3.5 (PL 42, 950); quoted by Henry of Ghent, Summa, ibid. 
(fol. 134v [D]). 

5 St. Augustine, De Trinitate VIL, 2.3. and 3.4.; quoted by Henry of Ghent, Summa, ibid. 


96 A. C. PEGIS 


a thing actually exists: from its presence, from its essence or nature, and 
from the known dependence of the existence of other things on the thing 
whose existence is in question. We know that a fire exists by seeing it 
(first way); we know the nature of fire without seeing it present (second 
way); we know that a fire exists in the house because we see smoke coming 
out of the chimney (third way*). In the first way, the blessed know that 
God exists by seeing His essence. By his natural powers, however, man 
can in no way arrive at seeing the divine essence. The third way Henry 
does not consider, but it can be only the a posteriori way elaborated in 
Question 4. The second way is the critical one. If a being is such that 
its existence is included in its essence, then to know its essence is to know 
that this being exists. But only God is such a being and only God can be 
so known to exist. No creature can be known to exist by knowing its 
essence because the essence of a creature can be known without involving 
the knowledge that it exists — indeed we can know at the same time 
that it does not exist. God alone is such that essence and existence are 
identical in Him. To know His essence is to know that it is a necessary 
existence, so that we cannot know the divine essence and also know that 
it does not exist. The point, then, of the second way of knowing that God 
exists is that, since His essence is His existence, to know His essence is to 
know thereby that He exists. 

Secundo modo nullam rem contingit scire esse in effectu nisi quidditas sua 
includat suum esse existentiae, quod contingit in solo deo quia in solo deo 
idem sunt essentia et esse, non solum essentiae sed etiam actualis existentiae, 
ut dictum est supra. Igitur isto modo cognoscendi nulla creatura potest sciri 
esse; contingit enim scire et cognoscere essentiam cuiuslibet creaturae non 
cognoscendo eam esse, immo cointelligendo eam non esse. Sed solum deum 
possibile est scire esse sciendo eius quidditatem et essentiam, quod scilicet talis 
sit quod in eo idem sunt essentia et esse, et per hoc scire ex eius essentia quod. 
sit necessaria existentia, ita quod non sit possibile intelligere eius essentiam 
intelligendo cum hoc ipsam non existere in effectu, ut infra videbitur; et hoc 
possibile est hominem scire et cognoscere de deo ex puris naturalibus, ut infra 
videbitur. Unde patet quod per hunc modum deus cognoscitur esse cognoscen- 
do eius essentiam quo ad hoc quod eius essentia includit ipsum esse. In ipso 


enim non differunt existentia et essentia, quod in visione nuda ipsius essentiae 
manifestissime contemplatur.’ 


This second way of knowing that God exists is the Avicennian way, i. e. 
ex via propositionum universalium intelligtbilium, non ex via testificationis sensi- 
bilium. ‘These universal propositions, Henry explains, have to do with ens, 
unum, bonum, which are the first notions of reality that we have. They are 


8 Supplied from Summa, A. 22, Q. 1; fol. 130r (L). 
? Summa, A. 22, Q. 5; fol. 134ν (Ο). 


A NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (II) 97 


the first conceived by the intellect, and in them we can perceive ens sim- 
pliciter and bonum and verum simplictter. But such an absolute being, good 
and true is something subsistent in itself and unparticipated; and what is 
such is existence itself (ipsum esse), the good itself, truth itself: it is God 
Himself, according to the teaching of St. Augustine. We thus rejoin the 
De Trinitate. 


Hoc, ut credo, intellexit Avicenna cum dixit quod possit homo scire deum 
esse ex via propositionum universalium intelligibilium, non ex via testificationis 
sensibilium. Sunt autem propositiones ilae universales de ente, uno, et bono, 
et primis rerum intentionibus quae primo concipiuntur ab intellectu, in quibus 
potest homo percipere ens simpliciter, bonum, aut verum simpliciter. Tale 
autem est necessario subsistens quid in se, non in alio participatum, et quod 
tale est ipsum esse est, ipsum bonum est, ipsa veritas est, ipse deus est, secundum 
quod dicit Augustinus VIII De Trinitate: deus veritas est.® 


We here witness a new synthesis, managed jointly by Avicenna and Au- 
gustine, leading to God, not by the testimony of sensible things, but by 
way of the first conceptions of the mind. This new way is not absolutely 
different from the a posteriori way from sensible things, since, in taking 
its origin from the knowledge of the essence of the creature, it too is from 
creatures. For, in this way, we understand what is true and good abso- 
lutely from the truth and goodness of the creature. Indeed, if we abstract 
from this and that good and then understand what is true and good ab- 
solutely, not as found in this or that being but residing in itself, in this true 
and good we understand God: 


Et ita cum secundum Avicennam et secundum rei veritatem conceptus 
quanto sunt simpliciores tanto sunt priores, et ideo unum, res et talia statim 
imprimuntur in anima prima impressione, quae non acquiritur ex aliis notiori- 
bus se; et secundum Augustinum intelligendo ens omnis entis et bonum simpli- 
citer omnis boni, intelligitur deus: — ideo ex talibus conceptibus propositionum 
universalium contingit secundum Avicennam et Augustinum intelligere et scire 
deum esse non exvia testificationis sensibilium, quod proculdubio verum est. Est 
enim iste modus alius a via cognoscendi deum esse ex testificatione sensibilium, 
qua esse creaturae testificatur esse dei secundum quod apparuit in quaestione 
praecedenti. Non tamen est omnino iste alius modus a via cognoscendi deum 
esse per creaturas, quia iste modus ortum sumit a cognitione essentiae creaturae. 
Ex veritate enim et bonitate creaturae intelligimus verum et bonum simpliciter. 
Si enim, abstrahendo ab hoc bono et illo possumus intelligere ipsum bonum et 
verum simpliciter, non ut in hoc et in illo, sed ut stans, deum in hoc intelligi- 
mus.? 


Avicenna and Augustine are agreed on a further point. They are agreed 
that we can scarcely follow the way to God from this good to the absolute 


8 Ibid. (Ὁ). 
8 Ibid. (DE). 


98 A. G. PEGIS 


good because our souls are weak. Our mind, as St. Augustine has said 
in the De Ordine,!° has busied itself with sensible things and finds it difficult 
to return to itself. We therefore need to ground our ascent to God in crea- 
tures, as Avicenna said, and to listen with St. Augustine to the hoc bonum 
in order to rise to the bonum simpliciter. But, as we have already heard, 
there is no doubt on the superiority of this way to God over the ways 
followed in Question 4. The superiority in question, as we likewise know, 
is that when in Question 4 we concluded that Deus est, we did not know 
that the predicate est was de ratione subiecti, whereas now in Question 5, 
in saying Deus est, we know in virtue of the way we have followed that in 
God there is an identity of essence and existence — that is, we know, in 
saying Deus est, that Deus est esse™ 

Yetwhat is a proof of God that proceeds from the essence of the creature, 
but not from its concrete actuality as a creature ? And how does it work ? 
How does Henry have the testimony of the hoc bonum and the hoc verum 
unless he listens to the testimony of sensible creatures ? If, whoever may 
be his immediate adversary, Henry is not satisfied with the proof in the 
second book of the De Libero Arbitrio on the ground of its a posteriori pro- 
cedure, within what world does he examine the hoc bonum in order to reach 
God? It seems to be the world of the Avicennian transcendentals, ens, 
unum, verum, which are first conceived by the intellect and have no notions 
prior to them. We know ens, we can then conceive hoc ens and reach. ens 
simpliciter. So Henry says. But how does the argument proceed, and how 
is it possible ? 


II 


Between Article 22, in which Henry of Ghent has announced and des- 
cribed his new proof of God, and Article 25, in which he intends to set 
it forth, there intervenes a discussion in Article 24, Question 6, that is the 
necessary link between them. Article 24 as a whole is concerned with our 
knowledge of the divine essence (de quidditate dei in comparatione ad nostram 
notitiam), and Question 6 deals with the view that we cannot know from 
creatures what God is (circa sextum arguitur quod non contingit sciri ex crea- 
turis quid est de deo), Henry’s examination of this position immediately 
plunges us into the two ways in which sensible substances can lead to a 
knowledge of suprasensible realities. 


10 St. Augustine, De Ordine I, 1.2-2.4 (PL 32, 993-996). 
11 Henry of Ghent, Summa, ibid. 
12 Summa, A. 24, Q. 6; foll. 141: (L)-148v (D). 


A NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (Π) 99 


Since some creatures are sensible and corporeal, writes Henry, and some 
are incorporeal and non-sensible, “the question concerning our knowledge 
of God from creatures has reference only to corporeal and sensible crea- 
tures, because of incorporeal and non-sensible creatures themselves we 
do not have any knowledge except from corporeal and sensible creatures.” 
Now we can gather some knowledge of a supernatural and non-sensible 
substance from material and sensible substances in two ways. In one way, 
according as the material substance is movable and sensible, that is, ac- 
cording as it is a natural substance and belonging to the consideration 
of the natural philosopher; in a second way, according as it is purely and 
simply a being and a substance and belonging to the consideration of the 
metaphysician!*. Henry’s exploration of these two ways of studying ma- 
terial substances offers an important clarification of the meaning of his 
a priori way to God. 

Question 6 of Article 24 contains two main points, namely the distinc- 
tion between explaining sensible creatures physically and metaphysically 
(including how the explanation reaches God), and a rather detailed jus- 
tification of the latter procedure. The consideratio physici is perfectly clear: 
“In the first way we obtain a knowledge that God exists from created sensible 
substances, as a result of comparing the caused to the cause, the movable 
to the mover. In this sense, the proof that God exists pertains to the phy- 
sical and natural philosopher, and not to the metaphysician except in so 
far as he puts on the character of the physical philosopher by accepting 
what the physical philosopher has proved.” No less clear is the meta- 
physical knowledge of God to which sensible creatures can lead us: “In 
a second way, on the other hand, we obtain from created sensible substan- 
ces the knowledge both that God exists (by another way, as we explained 
above, than by an inference from creatures) and also what God is, if 
indeed in the present life we do obtain any knowledge of what He is.” 


13 “Dicendum ad hoc quod, cum sint quaedam creaturae sensibiles corporales, quaedam vero 
incorporales insensibiles, quaestio de cognitione dei in nobis ex creaturis non intelligitur nisi ex 
creaturis corporalibus sensibilibus, quia etiam de creaturis incorporalibus insensibilibus non 
habemus cognitionem aliquam nisi ex corporalibus sensibilibus. Secundum hunc ergo modum 
intelligendi quaestionem, sciendum quod ex substantiis materialibus sensibilibus dupliciter po- 
test acquiri cognitio aliqua de substantia supernaturali insensibili. Uno modo, inquantum mo- 
bilis et sensibilis, hoc est, secundum quod est substantia naturalis et de consideratione physici; 
alio modo, secundum quod est ens et substantia simpliciter et de consideratione metaphysici” 
Summa, ibid.; fol. 141 r [MN]). 

14 “Primo modo ex substantiis sensibilibus creatis habetur cognitio de deo quia est, scilicet ex 
collatione causati ad causam, mobilis ad moventem, et sic probatio quia deus est per se pertinet 
ad physicum et naturalem philosophum et non ad metaphysicum nisi inquantum induit formam 
physici accipiendo probata a physico” (Summa, ibid.; fol. 141r [N]). 


100 A. G. PEGIS 


Henry adds how this takes place: “This takes place by way of eminence, 
through the abstraction from creatures of intentions that belong by ana- 
logy to creator and creatures. In this sense, to know from creatures that 
God exists and what He is belongs essentially to the metaphysician.”! 
Henry cites Averroes in confirmation of this view of the different ways 
in which the natural philosopher (the physicus) and the metaphysician (the 
metaphysicus) consider physical substances. The natural philosopher deals 
with the principles of body as something natural, whereas the metaphy- 
sician treats body purely and simply as substance. This difference in how 
sensible substance is considered, namely, as natural body and as substance, 
leads to a second difference, namely, the causual terms in which sensible 
substance is explained and accounted for. The natural philosopher ar- 
rives at prime matter, at natural forms and at a prime mover as his ex- 
planation of the world of natural bodies. The metaphysician, on the other 
hand, asks: what is the quiddity of substance ἢ To which question Henry 
answers by quoting Averroes: “When we shall have known what the quid- 
dity of sensible substance is, then we shall know the first cause of all beings”. 
Or, as Averroes says in the same text, and Henry quotes, we shall then know 
“the first form of all beings and the last end.”26 

We have now to consider the procedure and the direction taken by the 
metaphysician. We know that the highest cause reached by the natural 
philosopher is the prime mover, whereas the highest cause reached by the 
metaphysician is what Henry, following Averroes, calls the first form and 
the last end of all beings. The starting point leading to this conclusion is 
the quiddity of sensible substance, and the argument is that when we 
know this quiddity “we shall know the first cause of all beings.” Our 
problem is to know the nature of this argument. The remainder of Ar- 
ticle 24, Question 6, throws some oblique but strong light on the problem. 


15 “Secundo vero modo ex substantiis sensibilibus creatis habetur nostra cognitio de deo, et 
quia sit, alia scilicet via quam deductione ex creaturis, de qua sermo habitus est supra, et etiam 
quid sit, si qua cognitio de deo quid sit a nobis in praesenti habeatur. Et hoc fit via eminentiae 
per abstractionem a creaturis intentionum quae secundum analogiam communiter conveniunt 
creatori et creaturis. Et sic cognitio ex creaturis quia est et quid est per se pertinet ad metaphy- 
sicum” (Ibid. ; fol. 14Irv [N]). “Supra” refers, of course, to A. 22, Q. 5. 

16 “(nde Commentator super principio VII Metaphysicae, assignans differentiam considera- 
tionis substantiae sensibilis a physico et metaphysico, dicit quod in naturalibus ferscrutatus est 
philosophus de principiis corporis secundum quod est naturale, hie vero secundum quod est substantia tantum. 
Et ista quaestio inducit ad sciendum primam formam omnium et ultimum Sinem, quoniam cum fuerit scitum quid 
sit guidditas huius substantiae sensibilis, tunc erit scita prima causa omnium entium. Ila vero quaestio 
in scientia naturali inducit ad sciendum primam materiam et Sormas naturales et primum motorem” (Ibid.; 
fol. 141v [N]). For Averroes, see In VII Metaph., τ. c. 5 (ed. Venice, 1574, foll. 155v [M]-156r 
[A-G]). The italicized sentences in Henry’s text are quoted, with minor changes, from Averroes. 


A NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (11) 101 


Henry’s own point in this discussion is to determine what we know about 
the divine essence from creatures. That is why he has distinguished, with 
Averroes, between the work of the natural philosopher and the work of 
the metaphysician in examining bodily substances. What the metaphysi- 
cian does, as he understands it, will enable Henry to answer how we know 
from creatures the quid est of God. 

There are two ways of knowing what God is, namely, distinctly and in 
a universal way. The first is possible to those who see the divine essence, 
and Henry denies vigorously that this can be done naturally by the crea- 
ture under any circumstances, Let man climb as much as he likes toward. 
the divine essence, he will never reach it from creatures as it is in itself. 
But the creature, though a peregrina similitudo of the divine nature, is like 
the divine nature in some of its substantial attributes, not indeed as they 
are in the divine nature, but as universal attributes shared in by the crea- 
ture. The creature is not like the divine nature as it is in itself in the par- 
ticular: there is an infinite gulf between the creature and the divine es- 
sence. But the creature is like the divine essence so far as the divine es- 
sence “is a being, good, one, true, beautiful and the like, which according to 
a certain analogical character are common to creator and creature.” We 
do not know these notions as they are in God; we know them in their 
generality as attributes of the divine substance. Hence, the knowledge 
we have of the divine essence via such notions reaches it, not in its par- 
ticular reality, but as known in some universal attribute than can be as- 
serted of God from creatures.!” 

How we are to understand sucha way to the knowledge of the divine es- 
sence, which respects its infinite transcendence and is only analogically 
common to God and creature, Henry now proceeds to explain. If we 
know being as it is found in the creature, how do we nevertheless transcend 
the creature and predicate being of God? In the answer to this question, 
we shall see how Henry incorporates the teaching of St. Augustine within 
his own theory of abstraction; at the same time we shall begin to wonder 
whether St. Augustine does not remain Henry’s master. We shall even 
begin to wonder whether, in the new synthesis between Augustine and 
Avicenna, it is not Augustine who is carrying the day. 

There are two ways in which a form can be abstracted from the subject 
that participates in it. One is as related to such a subject, the other is as 
completely separated from it. In the first way, we abstract the universal 
from the particular, as we abstract good from this or that good. This is the 
universal that, as Aristotle says, is one in many. In the second way, the 


17 Henry of Ghent, Summa, A. 24, Q. 6; [01]. 142v-143r (PQR). 


102 A. CG. PEGIS 


abstraction separates the form completely from matter, as something sub- 
sisting in itself; for example, it separates the good from everything that 
participates in it, and the result is the good that is substantially and self- 
subsistently good. In the first of these two ways of abstracting, therefore, 
the abstracted form is understood as participated in by the creature ; but 
in the second way it is understood as unparticipatedly existing in the crea- 
tor.38 

How do we make the transition from the first to the second way of ab- 
stracting a form from its subject ? Henry uses the notion good, which is 
said analogically of creatures and God, to answer the question. We know 
this good by the sense in some sensible substance. We then abstract the 
good from the this and consider the good absolutely as a certain common and 
universal good, not this or that good. At this point we grasp the good as 
participated and as existing in many, in this and that good; and we now 
know the good itself as something universal and abstract. But on this know- 
ledge, by which we first know the good as a universal, we build a secondary 
abstraction. We abstract the good from everything else completely, and — 
we consider it absolutely, not as this or that, nor as belonging to this or 
that subject, but as belonging to no subject (which, Henry cannot refrain 
from hinting, is the self-subsisting good belonging to God alone). It is 
thus that, alongside the participated good of the creature, we know in a 
secondary way the essential good of the creator, not only in its excellence 
but also in that transcendence that totally removes it from creatures. And 
what is true of the abstraction of the good is likewise true of all the other 
attributes that belong in common to the creature and the creator. These 
can, in the way just explained, be known from the creature to be found in 
the creator.1® 


18 “Ad cuius intellectum sciendum quod duplex est abstractio formae per intellectum a sup- 
posito participante formam. Uno modo, ut relatae ad supposita; alio modo, ut absolutae a sup- 
positis. Considerata primo modo est abstractio universalis a particulari, ut boni ab hoc bono 
et ab illo, quia secundum Philosophum universale est unum in multis. Secundo modo est ab- 
stractio formae omnino a materia consideratae, scilicet ut in se subsistentis, ut boni ab omni par- 
ticipante bonum, quod est substantialiter et in se subsistens bonum. Unde primo modo intelli- 
gitur forma ut est participata a creatura, secundo modo ut est inpartilibis existens in creatore” 
(Ibid, [S]). For Aristotle’s definition of a universal, see De Interpretatione J, 7. 17a39; Metaphy- 
sics V, 26. 1023b30; VII, 13, 1038b11. 

19 “De quibus ipsum bonum communiter acceptum analogice dicitur. Unde sicut, cum cogno- 
verimus sensu hoc bonum in substantia sensibili abstrahendo per intellectum bonum ab hoc, 
consideramus bonum primo simpliciter, ut est commune quoddam et universale bonum, non 
ut hoc neque ut illud sed tantum ut participatum et existens in multis, scilicet in hoc et in illo: 
sic cognoscendo primo per intellectum bonum ipsum et universale et abstractum, postmodum 
abstrahendo bonum per intellectum ab alio omnino et considerando ipsum ut bonum simpli- 


A NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (I!) 103 


This is how, then, by means of the general notions that are analogically 
predicable of creatures and God, we can in a way have some knowledge 
of the divine essence. According to Henry of Ghent, this knowledge has 
three degrees of generality and indistinctness, beginning with the most in- 
distinct, in which the divine perfections are most identified with those of 
creatures, and ending with the recognition that all the prefections found in 
creatures must not only be freed of all creaturely limitations, but also be 
totally identified with one another in the divine essence posited in its 
full unity and transcendence. St. Augustine is the master of these three 
grades of knowing the divine essence, beginning with the text of the De 
Trinitate (VIII, 3.5) that invites us, if we can, to perceive in bonum hoc 
and illud the bonum by itself. Bonum hoc and bonum are given together, but 
the hoc is good by participation and otherwise a non-good. Could we per- 
ceive just the bonum in bonum hoc, we would perceive God. So far Augus- 
tine. : 

There are three distinct moments in this invitation to perceive the good, 
according to Henry of Ghent. We first understand hoc bonum in its full 
and indistinct identity with the creature that it is. The hoc bonum is the 
creature, yet, even so, the hoc in it belongs to the creature, but what is 
expressed by the bonum is common to creature and creator. If we now re- 
move the hoc and illud, the bonum is less limited to the creature. It is analo- 
gically common to God and creature, and is indeed among those notions 
that the human intellect first conceives (e. g. ens and unum). This is the 
second moment. But though, in themselves, the notions of the good that 
is the creator and the good that is the creature are distinct, the intellect 
understands them confusedly and indistinctly together. It is at the third 
moment that the intellect goes on to distinguish the subsisting and self- 
existent good as not participated but as other than the goods that are 
good by participating in it. Now the good we are conceiving is entirely 
abstracted from any creaturely good and is the good of the creator. The 
general conclusion of this analysis is clear. “What is true of the concept 
of the good is likewise the case with the conceptof being, the true, the beauti- 
ful, the just, and all the other notions (intentionum) which express something 
of worth and nobility in the creator and in creatures. In all of them we 
understand the character (ratio) of the first true, beautiful, just, and the 
like”. In the first notions of the intellect we grasp together what belongs 


citer, non ut hoc vel illud, neque ut huius vel illius, sed ut nullius omnino (quod est bonum in se 
subsistens solius creatoris), secundario iuxta bonum participatum creaturae cognoscimus bonum 
per essentiam ipsius creatoris, non tam via excellentiae quam via remotionis. Et sicut est de bono 
sic est de omnibus aliis attributis communiter convenientibus creaturae et creatori, quae per iam 
dictum modum possunt ex creaturis cognosci inesse creatori” (Summa, ibid.). 


104 A. C. PEGIS 


to God and to creatures. We grasp together the bonum creatoris and the 
bonum creaturae; and if we tend to judge in terms of the latter or to give it 
priority, the reason is that the bulkiness (grossities) of the created good casts 
a shadow in us over the notion of the uncreated good.2° 

To the notion of the divine essence as the self-subsistent and unparti- 
cipated good (or being, etc.) the second grade adds the character of emi- 
nence or excellence. God is now seen as the most excellent and sublime 
essence and the emphasis is, not on what He shares with creatures (being, 
goodness, etc), but on the unique way the attributes predicated of Him 
belong to Him alone. The world of creatures suggests such a knowledge. 
Wise men, finding imperfection in creatures and knowing that everything 
imperfect must be reduced to something perfect, have transcended all 
creatures by means of their reason and discovered that, beyond creatures, 
there has to be posited a nature free of all defect, endowed with all no- 
bility and perfection, whose name is God. All men have held God to be 
such a most excellent nature, although, not knowing in the particular what 
such a nature was, they have often fallen into idolatry and declared it 
to be what it was not. That is why, as Henry reminds us that he has al- 
ready pointed out, the knowledge of creatures by means of the philosophi- 
cal sciences is supremely necessary to Sacred Scripture. For this know- 
ledge not only proves that God exists, it also tells men what God is not 
and what He is, so far as this can be known naturally. In saying this, 
Henry is not thinking of his own age. As his quotations show, he is thinking 
of St. Augustine.” 

The third grade in our knowledge of the divine essence is, naturally, 
a final and maximum effort in determining how far creatures can take us 
in answering the question quid sit deus. We know God as the subsistent and 
unparticipated good (or being, etc.) in the first grade (generalissime, says 
Henry) and as uniquely the most excellent good in the second grade (ge- 
neralius). We now reach the third grade (generaliter), in which we re- 
duce all the general attributes that we have predicated of God to a single 
all-inclusive because most simple one. We do so by recognizing “that 
whatever is in God is His essence and that His essence is absolutely, in 
reality or in intention, nothing other than His being or His existence.” 
This we know only by way of remotion. For, after the first two grades, 
all that remains for us to know is how all the perfections that we now know 
to be in God are in Him. The perfections that we know to be in God from 


20 Ibid. (STV). 
21 Ibid. (VXY). . 
22 For the terminology, see Summa, ibid. (5). 


A NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (I) 105 


creatures are there (in creatures) affected by diversity and composition, 
which are defects. These perfections are in God, however, with a supreme 
unity and simplicity. Remotion is thus our last word in reaching the 
divine essence from creatures. As St. Augustine said, whatever creatures 
tell us is always less than God. Who, then, grasps God as He should be 
grasped ? Yes, God is ineffable, for our speech cannot now say what the 
vision of His essence would say. Yet God is not entirely ineffable, and we 
should not say so, since we do have (as we have seen) a general knowledge 
of His essence from creatures.** 


Il 


The distinctive fruits of this doctrine, and particularly its Augustinian 
foundations, are nowhere more visible than in Henry’s answer to the issue 
raised in Question 7.25 Is the divine essence that which we first know from 
creatures? Henry’s answer is affirmative, but to enforce it and yet do so 
within the empirical framework of the Aristotelain epistemology, he must 
manage to show how the Augustinian journey from the bonum hoc to the 
bonum simpliciter is unavoidably present within our knowledge. 

The state of the question and its internal tensions are visible in the argu- 
ments pro and contra. For, it is argued contra, if creatures are the means 
through which we arrive at a knowledge of the divine essence, we know 
creatures before we know what God is. Moreover, we know what God is 
from creatures solely by means of a knowledge derived from the imagina- 
tion and the sense. By the sense we first grasp sensible species, from which 
we abstract intelligible species, which are the means by which our intellect 


23 “Tertio modo, generali scilicet, cognoscit homo quid sit deus non solum in suis generalibus 
attributis, reducendo quicquid dignitatis et nobilitatis est in creaturis in deum simpliciter, ut in 
primo modo, neque sub quadam excellentia reducendo quicquid dignitatis et nobilitatis est in 
creaturis in deum in excellentia, ut in secundo modo, sed cognoscendo quid sit in eius primo 
attributo simplicissimo, reducendo scilicet omnia nobilitatis et dignitatis attributa eius in unum 
primum simplicissimum, scilicet per intellectum, quia quicquid in ipso est sit eius essentia et 
quod eius essentia nihil omnino sit aliud re vel intentione quam eius esse sive existentia, ut de- 
claratum est supra. Et hoc ex creaturis de ipso habet cognosci sola via remotionis. Cum enim ~ 
cognitum fuerit de ipso quid sit primo et secundo modo, nihil restat amplius ex creaturis de ipso 
cognoscendum nisi quomodo quaecunque cognoscuntur esse in ipso se habent in ipso; et hoc con- 
vincitur ex creaturis ex eo quod homo percipit quod illa quae sunt nobilitatis in creaturis sunt 
in eis per quandam diversitatem et compositionem, et quod hoc defectus est et imperfectionis. 
Notum enim est quia a deo removenda est omnino diversitas et compositio, et quod in ipso sunt 
per summam unitatem et simplicitatem” (Ibid. [Z]). 

24 Jbid.; fol. 143rv (Z). 

25 Summa, A. 24, Q. 7; foll. 143v-144v (E-K). 


106 A. C. PEGIS 


knows the quiddities of things. But what we know first by this sort of 
species is a material form, since such a species is of itself nothing other than 
the likeness (ratio) of a material form. If, then, the human intellect knows 
what God is from creatures, and His quiddity is purely an immaterial form, 
that quiddity cannot be known except at a secondary moment. The Aris- 
totelian contra is thus posed. The Augustinian bro now follows. What do 
we mean by something being “first known” (primo cognitum) ? We mean 
that by which other things are to be judged if they are to be known by the 
intellect. The intellect cannot judge that anything is good or just (or has 
any other of the perfections common to God and creatures) unless it 
knows the good and the just as such, which means knowing through them 
themselves and not through something else that they are such. This is what 
Augustine has taught in the De Trinitate, the De Vera Religione, the Solilo- 
quia and indeed “wherever he speaks of this subject. But such a good anda 
just reality in none other than the good and just reality that is God Him- 
self, 26 
The conflict between Aristotle and St. Augustine could not be more 
sharply expressed. But it is entirely distinctive of Henry of Ghent that the 
conflict is for him the occasion of a synthesis. How, we ask, given the em- 
piricist argument of the second objector, can Henry pursue his Augustinian 
effort to reach from the bonum hoc that he finds in creatures to a knowledge 
of the divine nature? For if with St. Augustine he finally recognizes that 
in His transcendence God is totally unreachable, still, with the same St. 
Augustine he finds the bonum simpliciter scarcely hidden in the bonum hoc of 
the creation. And how is this absolute good, which in its absoluteness 
finally escapes us, ever in our intellectual grasp in the material likeness 
that we draw from the world of bodies? Does not the way of remotion, 
we ask in our own turn, begin for Henry much later than Aristotelian em- 
piricism could allow ? Faced by the same question, and admitting that our 
intellectual knowledge was limited to the world of bodies, St. Thomas 
Aquinas had made the via remotionis the principle of his investigation of the 
divine essence; the result was the doctrine that the divine essence was in 
itself totally unknown to us: we know from creatures purely and simply 
that God exists, we know nothing about quid sit deus.27 Henry of Ghent 
says this in the end, but not before he has explored the texts of St. Augustine, 


26 Ibid.; fol. 143v (E). I have deleted quia from the text. 

27 See, especially, St. Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I, c. 14. On the Thomistic doctrine that 
the divine nature is wholly unknown to us, see A. C. Pegis, ““Penitus Manet Ignotum”, Mediaeval 
Studies, 27 (1965) 212-226. There are three principal Thomistic texts that plot the way in which, 
in the present life, man reaches and knows God: In I Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 1; Exp. super Librum Boethii 
de Trinitate, q. 1, a. 2; Sum Theol., 1, q. 12, a. 12. A partly related text is De Veritate, q. 8, a. 1. 


\ NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (I!) 107 


and especially De Trinitate VIII, 2.3-3.5, in pursuit of the absolute good 
that seems scarcely hidden in the particular goods of creation. How is this 
metaphysical construction (Henry’s secondary abstraction) possible in the 
line of the epistemology of Aristotle ? Question 7 contains the answer. 

Henry distinguishes between a natural and a rational knowledge of God 
from creatures. The first is that knowledge of God which is immediately 
and naturally conceived by the mind with the first notions (intentionibus) of 
being. The second is the knowledge reached by rational or discursive rea- 
soning. As far as discursive reasoning is concerned, the situation is perfectly 
clear. “What God is is not the first thing that man knows from creatures, 
but, quite the contrary, the last. Rather, what the creature itself is is first 
known and through it what God is, by way of eminence and remotion.” In 
other words, the secondary abstraction of Question 6 is built (in a threefold 
gradation) on the primary abstraction of universals from particulars.** The 
situation of our natural knowledge is quite different. In our natural know- 
ledge, what God is is what is first grasped by the intellect: guid est deus est 
primum comprehensible per intellectum. We are speaking now of the knowledge 
that we have in the first intentions of being naturally conceived by the in- 
tellect, which are being, true, one, good. This knowledge belongs to the 
first and second grades set down by Henry in Question 6. The reason why 
God is what is first known in our natural knowledge stems from the nature 
of our knowledge. Beginning from the sense, our intellectual knowledge, 
as in the sense itself, begins from something indeterminate. The sense 
conceives its sensibles indeterminately before conceiving them determi- 
nately. We know a man at a distance to be a body before we know that it is 
an animal, an animal before knowing that it is a man, and a man before 
knowing that it is Socrates. So, too, the intellect. By nature, though not 
always in time, it first knows of anything that it is a being before knowing 
that it is this being, good before knowing that it is this good, a being before 
knowing that it is a substance. The intellect always grasps the more con- 
fused universals before grasping those that are more particular and deter- 
minate. In general: “The more an intelligible is indeterminate, the greater 
the priority with which our intellect naturally grasps it: et sic universaliter 
quanto intelligibile magis est indeterminatum, tanto naturaliter prius ipsum intel- 
lectus noster intelligit.”*® 

Indetermination is said privatively and negatively. Hoc bonum is com- 
pletely determined in matter and subject. But the universal good is privati- 
vely undetermined: it is one in and of many, it is not this or that good. When 


£8 Henry summarizes this whole doctrine in the present Q. 7, fol. 144r (F). 
29 Ibid. (6). 


108 A. GC. PEGIS 


we understand the good absolutely and as subsistent, that is, not as this or 
that good, or belonging to this or that individual (because it is the unparti- 
cipated good), we are grasping a good whose nature is not to be determined. 
This is negative indetermination, and it is greater than privative indetermi- 
nation. The situation then is this. Since it is always the case that our intel- 
lect naturally conceives the indeterminate before the determinate, whether 
the indeterminate is distinct or not distinct from the determinate, in gras- 
ping any good whatever our intellect “naturally co-understands in it by 
priority the good that is negatively undetermined — and this is the good 
that is God;” and what is true of the good applies to whatever else we 
grasp concerning God from creatures.®° Absolutely speaking, then, concern- 
ing the most general manner of grasping what God is (this is applied by 
Henry to the first two grades), we say that “what God is is the first object 
to be grasped by the human intellect from creatures: quid est deus est primum 
obiectum quod ab humano intellectu ex creaturis habet intelligi.” The result is as 
astonishing as it is far-reaching: “Hence, nothing can be known in and from 
creatures — something true, good, beautiful, just, a being, one, or some 
determinate thing of this sort existing through matter or through a subject 
— unless we know by natural priority (though at times there may be 
simultaneity in duration) that which is the absolute and undetermined 
true, good, beautiful, being, one, and the like; so that, to wit, we find 
the beginning and the end of our knowledge in God: the beginning, with 
reference to our most general knowledge of God, the end, with reference 
to the particular and bare vision of Him. This means that God is the be- 
ginning and the end of all things in the order of cognitional being, just 
as He is their beginning and end in the order of their natural being; so 
that, just as nothing else can be perfectly known unless He is first perfectly 
known, so nothing (e. g. a man, something white, or any other thing what- 
ever) can be known however imperfectly unless He is first known at least 
in the most general grade of knowledge. For nothing of this sort is known 
in the creature or grasped such as it is unless we first know it and grasp it 
under the intention of being and unity, and the other primary intentions; 
so that, that it is a being and something one, which are notions necessarily 
conceived of each and every thing in a first impression (involving at least 
a priority of nature), precedes the conception of anything among them as 
white or as a man. But when being is conceived, the first being is neces- 
sarily conceived, as we have said. In the same way, in conceiving this 
good we necessarily conceive the good absolutely and in it we conceive the 
good that belongs to God, or rather is God Himself, as was said above by 


30 Ibid. (H). 


A NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (II) 109 


Augustine. So, too, in conceiving that which is a man or something white, 
I conceive being absolutely and in it the first being that is God. We must 
therefore affirm without reservation, according to what Augustine has 
determined, that in every knowledge by which something in conformity 
with truth is known in the creature (for example, when being, truth, good- 
ness, or the like, is known, and this in the most general grade), we know 
something that belongs to God, that, namely, is something in Him and is 
God Himself.” 

That this is, in principle, Augustinian teaching there is no doubt. As 
in Augustine, Anselm and Bonaventure, so in Henry of Ghent, God is 
holding creation fast in the visible light of His presence. But this is Augus- 
tinianism built as a second moment in a doctrine of abstraction, and who, 
if not Aristotle, is the original master of such a doctrine ἢ How does Henry 
meet the Aristotelian objections to the position that he is here defending ? 
It was objected, first, that since the divine essence was known from the 
creature as from a means, the creature as means had to be known first. 
The second objector had argued that species abstracted from phantasms 
enable us, first and primarliy, to grasp only the quiddity of a material thing. 
If these objections are sound, they seem to limit the intellect to the world 
of bodies as its first and only direct object of knowledge — in which case 


31 “Absolute ergo dicendum quod in generalissimo modo intelligendi quid est deus, quo ad 
primum et secundum eius gradum quid est deus est primum obiectum quod ad humano intel- 
lectu ex creaturis habet intelligi, ut nihil possit cognosci in creaturis et ex creaturis (quia verum, 
bonum, pulchrum, iustum, ens, unum, aut aliquid huiusmodi determimantum existens per ma- 
teriam aut per suppositum) nisi naturaliter prius, licet quandoque simul duratione, cognito eo 
quod est simpliciter et inderminatum verum, bonum, pulchrum, ens, unum et huiusmodi, ut 
scilicet in ipso deo sit principium et finis nostrae cognitionis: principium quo ad eius cognitionem 
generalissimam, finis quo ad eius nudam visionem particularem, ut sic sit principium et finis 
omnium rerum in esse cognitivo, sicut est principium et finis earum in esse naturae; et sicut 
nihil aliud potest perfecte cognosci nisi ipso prius perfecte Cognito, sic nec aliquid potest cognosci 
quantumcunque imperfecte nisi ipso prius saltem in generalissimo gradu cognito, ut homo, aut 
album, aut quodcunque aliud. Nihil enim talium cognoscitur in creatura aut intelligitur ut 
tale nisi prius cognoscendo et intelligendo ipsum sub intentione entis et unius et ceterarum pri- 
marum intentionum, ut quod sit ens aut unum, quae necessario prima impressione saltem prio- 
ritate naturae concipiuntur de quolibet antequam concipiatur aliquid eorum, quia album aut 
quia homo. Concipiendo autem ens necessario concipitur primum et simpliciter ens, ut dictum 
est. Sicut enim concipiendo hoc bonum necessario concipitur bonum simpliciter et in illo bonum 
quod dei est, vel ipse deus est, ut dictum est per Augustinum supra, sic concipiendo hoc quod 
est homo vel album, concipio ens simpliciter et in illo primum ens quod deus est. Simpliciter ergo 
dicendum secundum determinationem Augustini quod in omni cognitione qua cognoscitur ali- 
quid secundum veritatem in creatura, cognoscitur aliquid quod dei est, quod scilicet est quid in 
eo et ipse deus, ut entitas, veritas, bonitas, vel aliquid huiusmodi, et hoc modo generalissimo” 
(Ibid.). 


110 A. C. PEGIS 


we are somewhere near the Aristotelian position of St. Thomas Aquinas 
who had said that phantasms are the permanent object and hence founda- 
tion of our knowledge: “Phantasms are related to the intellect as the objects 
in which it sees all that it sees either by way of perfect representation or by 
way of negation.” The formula is perfect for what it wishes to say. 

Henry does not see things in this way. In reply to the first objector he 
says that one thing can be known from another either formally or material- 
ly: “A is the formal ground for knowing B when, as in the case of demon- 
stration (in which conclusions are known from premises), by beginning 
with the knowledge of A the intellect acquires by discursiveness the know- 
lege of B. In this sense, we do not know from creatures what God is; on the 
contrary, “whatever truth about creatures we conceive through the intel- 
lect we conceive on the ground of the knowledge of the first truth, just as 
we know goodness in creatures only on the ground of the first goodness, of 
which the knowledge is naturally impressed on the mind, as we said above 
following Augustine.” This is true at the most general grade of knowledge: 
we do not know the bonum in bonum hoc except because of the divine impres- 
sion. But once we have crossed the first grade, we can deduce what God is 
from creatures by means of excellence and remotion. 

Materially speaking, one thing is known from another when that by 
which the other is known is drawn from it. In this material sense, whatever 
we know about God we know from creatures, that is, from the intelligible 
species by which the intellect knows the intelligibles it abstracts from sen- 
sible things. Through the first intelligible species abstracted from the 
phantasm in the imagination the intellect first conceives its first intelligible 
concepts — those of being, one, true, good, and the other general concepts 
in their generality, that is, without distinguishing in them what belongs to 
the creator from what belongs to the creature. When, for example, we 
abstract from substance the being that is analogically common to substance 
and accident, without distinguishing within the concept of being what 
belongs to substance from what belongs to accident, or when among uni- 
vocal notions we abstract such a common nature as animal from a donkey, 
without distinguishing in the notion what belongs to the donkey from what 
belongs to a horse, — when we do this, we have analogies of the indistinc- 


32 “Ad quintum dicendum quod phantasma est principium nostrae cognitionis ut ex quo in- 
cipit intellectus operatio, non sicut transiens sed sicut permanens, ut quoddam fundamentum 
intellectualis operationis (sicut principia demonstrationis oportet manere in omni processu scien- 
tiae), cum phantasmata comparentur ad intellectum ut obiecta, in quibus inspicit omne quod 
inspicit vel secundum perfectam reprasentationem vel per negationem” (St. Thomas, Exp. Super 
Librum B. de Trinitate, α. 6, a. 2, ad 5; ed. B. Decker [Leiden, 1955], 218). The punctuation of the 
text is due to the present writer. 


A NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (I!) 111 


tion in our first general concepts. But once, on the material basis of the 
species of sensible things, we have conceived the first and most general 
intentions, then, should we be called on to make judgments of truth that 
involve distinguishing what belongs to the creator from what belongs to the 
creature, the situation is this: we cannot perceive and judge that something 
is good unless we first have perceived the nature of the good taken absolute- 
ly. This absolute good we do not judge, we judge through it that something 
is a particular good, even though we do not distinguish between the abso- 
lute good by which we judge and the particular good that we judge. The 
reply to the objector, then, and its Augustinian roots are easily summarized: 
“Thus, in all concepts in which something is judged to be true, good, and 
the like, and generally in which something is perceived as true, good, beau- 
tiful, or the like, the first concepts in rank to be conceived are those of the 
first being, true and good, in which, as we have said, we know what God 
is by a most general knowledge.”** 

The ground of our knowing what God is, therefore, is not creatures, but 
those first intentions or notions that the mind forms from its first abstracted 
intelligible species. These are the first and most general level of Henry’s 
secondary abstraction. They are not only transcendentals abstracted from 
things, but also, and more mysteriously, a preformed meeting ground be- 
tween the sovereign divine good and creaturely goods. As transcendentals, 
such notions as being, true, good come from creatures, but creatures are 
only materially the ground of our knowing what God is; they are not 
formally such a ground. Henry offers two examples of a formal ground, 
namely, demonstrations, whose conclusions are formally drawn from pre- 
mises, and, generally, any instance in which the knowledge of one thing 
leads by discursive reasoning to the knowledge of another. But the trans- 
cendentals, once formed, somehow contain the divine presence, enabling 
the intellect to speak of the true and the good as it does. We ask: how can 
abstractions that are originally the likenesses of sensible things lead to such 
transcendental results ? In the reply to the second objector Henry explains, 
once again, the transition from the empirical first moment of our know- 
ledge to his secondary world of abstractions. There is, in fact, more in an 
intelligible species for Henry of Ghent than we have realized — indeed, 
what is more to the point, than St. Thomas had ever realized. 

The abstracted intelligible species of a thing is more than the principle 
(ratio) by which the intellect forms the concept of the quiddity of that deter- 
minate thing, by which precisely the thing differs from another thing. It 
is also the principle of conceiving “all the common concepts up to the first 


33 Henry of Ghent, Summa, ibid.; fol. 144v (I). 


112 A. C. PEGIS 


and most common concept of being as being, which is likewise implicitly 
contained in every determinate concept.” If this is true, the results are 
far-reaching. “If, then, we abstract any general concept (e. g. that of 
being, the true, or the-good), which, as we have said, is indifferently com- 
mon to what belongs to the creator and what belongs to the creature, it is 
clear that what is first understood in that concept cannot be what belongs 
to the creature, it must rather be what belongs to God.” The reason for 
this reversed situation is not far to seek. “In the concept of a universal 
(for example, being as such), we cannot understand what belongs to the 
creature without understanding ‘being in another’, in the manner in which 
a universal is understood as being ‘one in many’. But we cannot under- 
stand ‘being in another’ unless we first naturally understand being in a 
state of absolute abstraction, as not this or that, or belonging to this being 
or that: this is to understand being as subsisting in pure entity, which 
belongs only to God. Should a person take note of this fact and conceive 
being as subsisting in itself, he then grasps God in a distinct way.” Henry 
enforces his point by addressing the reader directly. “When you understand 
any of the general intentions of things (e.g. being, true, good) in an absolute 
way, what you understand first is God, though you do not notice it, and as 
long as you stand in that absolute understanding, so long do you stand 
in the understanding of God. But if you determine in any way what 
you have conceived absolutely, you immediately drop into the understand- 
ing of some creature, as Augustine says in the eighth book of the De Trinitate.” 
We are therefore led back again to De Trinitate, VIII, 2.3, which Henry 
once more quotes, not without some management. But even falling back 
into the daily world of creatures does not entirely prevent us from grasping 
God. “For in every concept of being, however determinate it may be, there 
is included the first concept of being taken absolutely, and in it there is 
included the concept of the first being, at least according to the first two 
grades of understanding the first being in the most general way, as we have 
already said.”%4 


IV 


If we now reflect on the metaphysical road that Henry of Ghent has 
opened up in Summa, Article 24, Questions 6-7, we cannot but recognize 
that this discussion is a decisive model of the a priori method announced in 
Article 22, Question 5. From Questions 6-7 of Article 22, we know how 
Henry’s metaphysical way to God proceeds, even though we still have only 


84 Ibid. (K). 


A NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (1) 113 


an analytical description of the method involved, not a justification. We 
also know more clearly the difference between the worlds of the physicus 
and the metaphysicus ; and especially we know that the alliance between St. 
Augustine and Avicenna has as one of its principal consequences — not to 
say objectives — to allow the doctrine of the divine illumination to shine 
through the realm of being, as known by man, at its most ultimate moment, 
the transcendentals. 

By his procedure, the physicus reaches God as the prime mover, the su- 
preme source of motion: deus est means to him that there is a supreme 
source of motion. The methaphysician, on the other hand, follows 
another way both in proving that God exists and in examining what He is. 
This other way was announced and explained in its general character in 
Summa, Article 22, Question 5. The method there adopted was a priori but 
still from creatures. It proceeded, within the transcendentals, which were 
names of perfections common to God and creatures, from (e. g.) the bonum 
hoc, that is, a particular kind of bonum, to the bonum simpliciter, the absolutely 
good. In Article 24, Question 6, where the knowledge of what God is is 
at stake, we travel the same way from the bonum hoc to the bonum simpliciter. 
We do so by considering the abstracted form, not as a universal predicable 
of many and belonging to many (this is the first way of abstraction), but 
as something absolute and without reference to the subject or the matter 
of the form. Hence arises the notion of an absolute good, which opens up 
for Henry of Ghent an intellectual journey to God seen more and more 
distinctly as the self-subsistent and unparticipated good (first grade), by 
comparison with creatures as the most excellent good (second grade), and, 
finally, the single and all-perfect and totally transcendent reality (third 
grade). 

This metaphysical journey begins in the natural knowledge of the human 
intellect, constituted by its first, most indeterminate and most embracing 
notions. The intellect experiences in these notions structures and perspec- 
tives whose pressure it feels even when it does not advert to them. Creatu- 
rely though the content of its knowledge may be, the intellect nevertheless 
cannot judge anything to be true or good or one without doing so in the 
controlling priority of the absolute true, good, one. In this sense, God is 
the first object grasped by the intellect in its natural knowledge. More- 
over, it is not from creatures (except materially speaking) that this divine 
primacy is reached and experienced by the intellect, or followed in judg- 
ments concerning truth, goodness, or any general perfections common to 
God and creatures; it is reached from its own naturally-present influence 
on the mind: quicquid veritatis de creaturis per intellectum concipitur, formaliter 
concipitur ex ratione cognitionis primae veritatis, sicut non cognoscitur bonttas in 


114 A. G. PEGIS 


creaturis nist ex ratione primae bonitatis, cuius cognitio est naturaliter menti impressa, 
ut dictum est supra secundum Augustinum.?® 

It is therefore correct to say that the new synthesis effected by Henry of 
Ghent enables the doctrine of the divine illumination to be distinctively 
visible in the world of empirically derived concepts. After the Aristotelian 
synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna’s metaphysical teaching made 
it possible for Henry to bypass the physical world of Aristotle, and to reach 
God from creatures, not by physical means, but along the illuminative 
highway that St. Bonaventure had already learned from St. Augustine 
and followed in his Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. In a world seemingly ruled 
by Aristotelian notions and principles, Henry of Ghent nevertheless learn- 
ed from Avicenna notions that enabled him to follow St. Augustine and 
even to do so on philosophical grounds — that is to say, on grounds that 
seemed to agree with Aristotelianism at the very moment of creating a 
deeply Platonic revolution within it. 

But is a Platonizing Aristotelianism possible ? That is the question that 
Henry of Ghent is not exactly alone in posing for the historian. The intel- 
ligible species or form that the intellect abstracts from the phantasm in the 
imagination is both a likeness of a material thing and a pure essence. Ab- 
straction explains the origin of the likeness, while the intellect, living by 
nature in the light of God, explains the pure essence: the absolute truth 
and goodness that the intellect conceives and progressively sees in their 
eminence and unity are rooted, not in the world of physical things, but 
in the intellect’s immediate openness to the divine light. And what is 
extraordinary about this result is not simply the return of Henry of Ghent 
to St. Augustine; it is that this return is effected on an Aristotelian empirical 
basis. When St. Thomas had followed the Aristotelian theory of know- 
ledge, and especially its empiricism, he had eliminated the doctrine 
of a special divine presence within creatures and within knowledge, 
and he had argued that man reaches God, and knows Him, only as 
far as the world of physical bodies enables him to do so. Abstract know- 
ledge had for St. Thomas no other content, and no other ground, than 
the being of the physical world. Hence there could be no purely metaphy- 
sical (6. 1. non-empirical) ways to God, since all the ways were ultimately 
built on physical data. The Thomistic proofs of God can therefore be called 
mixed (i. 6. at once physical and metaphysical) in the sense that, though 
they use and follow metaphysical principles and notions, their data remain 
realities in the physical world. 

The metaphysical distance between St. Thomas and Henry of Ghent 


35 Ibid.; ad. 1; fol. 144v (I). The immediate reference of supra is the Responsio of Q. 7. 


A NEW WAY TO GOD: HENRY OF GHENT (1) 115 


could not be greater than at this moment. Henry has a doctrinal position 
and an epistemological method that escape —- and are intended to escape 
— the deeply empirical view of knowledge that Aristotle had established 
against Plato. Our earlier question, then, has an answer. Henry of Ghent 
can do in metaphysics what he cannot do by means of the testimony of 
sensible creatures: he can embark on an absolute journey from the essences 
of creatures to God in His transcendent unity.** He can do so because he 
has fused the Augustinian doctrine of the divine illumintaion with the 
Avicennian absolute essence. What St. Thomas himself had done is clear 
enough. He had rejected any doctrine of a special natural divine illumina- 
tion.37 As concerns Avicenna, we know from the De Ente et'Essentia how he 
had explored the notion of the absolute essence and, while accepting it, had 
eliminated Avicenna’s Platonism from the doctrine.?* As St. Thomas saw 
things, any absolute essence (humanity or the more famous equinity) was 
neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular: it was just an 
absolute essence or, as Avicenna had put it, ipsa equinitas non est aliquid nist 
equinitas tantum.2® How, then, could one consider equinity except to say of 
it solely what belonged to it absolutely ? It was, purely and simply, equi- 
nity. To St. Thomas this meant that nothing could be affirmed of the abso- 
lute essence except its absoluteness; which was, for the same St. Thomas, 
another way of saying that no existential affirmations could be made of the 
absolute essence and no existential inferences could be drawn from it. The 
absolute essence was not an existential fertium quid in relation to its existence 
in the intellect and its existence in material singulars: the absolute essence 
had no other existence than in the intellect and in singulars. Let us grant, 
in fact, that the absolute essence man need not exist in any particular singu- 
lar or in the intellect: verum est dicere quod homo inquantum est homo non habet 
quod sit in hoc singulari vel in illo aut in anima. To St. Thomas this means that 
the absolute essence man abstracts from every mode of existence, but it does 
not cut itself off from them: patet ergo quod natura hominis absolute considerata 
abstrahit a quolibet esse, ita tamen quod non fiat praecisio alicuius eorum.*° What is 


36 See A. Ὁ. Pegis, “Toward a New Way to God: Henry of Ghent”, Mediaeval Studies, 30 (1968), 
246-247. 

37 On the problem of the divine illumination in St. Thomas, see: Summa Conira Gentiles, III, 
cc. 46-47; Sum. Theol., I, q. 79, aa. 3-6; q. 84, a. 5: α. 88, a. 3; De Spirit. Creat., a. 10 (especially 
ad 8); De Anima, q. 6. 

38 St. Thomas, De Ente et Essentia, c. 3; ed. M.-D. Roland-Gosselin (Le Saulchoir, Kain, Bel- 
gium, 1926), 23-29; English tr. A. Maurer, second revised edition (Toronto, 1968), 45-50. For 
Avicenna, see Metaphysics, Tr. V, cc. 1-2; (Venice, 1508), foll. 86va-87vb. 

39 Avicenna, Metaph., Tr. V, c. 1; fol. 86va. 

40 St. Thomas, De Ente et Essentia, c. 3; ed. M.-D. Roland-Gosselin, 26. 


116 A. G. PEGIS 


the absolute essence, therefore, except that which is universal in the intel- 
lect and singular in reality, and nothing else ? 

Had Henry of Ghent seen the absolute essence in this way, he would not 
have had the metaphysical outlook that he did and he would not have 
undertaken an a priori proof of the existence of God. But in the same text 
of the Metaphysics of Avicenna that describes the absolute essence there was 
a further point that held his attention and prevented him from following St. 
Thomas’ transformation of Avicenna. Avicenna said that the absolute es- 
sence eguinity “of itself is neither many nor one, nor is it an existent within 
sensible things or within the soul, nor is it something belonging to them po- 
tentially or actually, so that this is contained within the essence of equinity: 
ipsa enim [equinitas] ex se nec est multa nec unum, nec est existens in his sensibilibus 
nec in anima, nec est aliquid horum potentia vel effectu, ita ut contineatur intra essen- 
tiam equinitatis.”*1 The message in these words, which seem to liberate es- 
sences both from the mind and from the confining realm of sensible things, 
opened the thought of Henry of Ghent to the world of essences in a way 
that St. Thomas had learned from Aristotle to refuse to acknowledge. This 
world of essences was to be the vehicle of the new Augustinianism of Henry 
of Ghent, indeed a triumphant Augustinianism in the face of Aristotle. 

We have now to see how the Avicennian absolute essence, born in the 
world of experience but not of it, built the road that Henry of Ghent fol- 
lowed in his proof of the existence of God. 


Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 


Ἢ Avicenna, Metaph., ibid. 


Theory of Composition in Medieval Narrative 
Poetry and Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria Nova 


DOUGLAS KELLY 


EOFFREY of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova was certainly the most widely 
used treatise on composition written in the Middle Ages. More than 

57 manuscripts of the work have survived, as compared with five of Mat- 
thew of Vend6me’s Ars Versificatoria and none, so far as we know, of Bernard 
Silvestris’ Summa,! the two most influential medieval poetriae besides Geof- 
frey’s. And Geoffrey’s treatise was copied and, eventually, printed in whole 
or in excerpts down into the seventeenth and even eighteenth centuries. 
Of course, the Poetria nova enjoyed wide circulation in part because it was 
written not only for the classroom, but for a larger public as well, as we 
may see by the dedication to Innocent III. Furthermore the broader scope 
of this treatise made it more useful as a compendium both for the writers 
in the schools and for the general literary public, and particularly for writers 
in the vernacular languages, who applied the principles of the arts of poetry 
to their own writing. Chaucer is the best known example of the influence 
ofthe Poetria nova on vernacular writers; and his allusion to that treatise and 
the use he makes of the instruction contained in it reveal how popular Geof- 
frey remained in the schools throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.* But 


1 Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (Munich, 1911-31), 
3, 742; Edmond Faral, Les Arts poétiques du XII° et du XILII® siécle (Paris, 1924, 1958), pp. xiii-xiv, 
13-14, 27-28. Franz Quadlbauer, Die antike Theorie der genera dicendi im lateinischen Mittelalter, 
Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, 241, 2 (Graz, 
Vienna, Cologne, 1962), mentions two unpublished manuscripts that may contain Bernard’s 
treatise; see pp. 273, ὃ 87f, and 275, ὃ 87q. Faral’s edition is the source of the citations and 
references to the treatises of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Matthew of Vendéme, and Eberhard the 
German; italicized words in the citations are changes in Faral’s text proposed by W.B. Sedgwick, 
“Notes and Emendations on Faral’s Les Aris poétiques,” Speculum, 2 (1927), 331-343. 

2 Faral, Les Arts poéliques, 28. 

3 The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2d ed. (Boston, 1957), 7, vss. 3347-54 (p.204). 
For bibliography on the problem of Chaucer and medieval poetics, see Dorothy Everett, “Some 
Reflections on Chaucer’s ‘Art Poetical’,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 36 (1950), 148, note 4; 
James J. Murphy, “A New Look at Chaucer and the Rhetoricans,” The Review of English Studies, 
n. 5. 15 (1964), 1, note 1. The following titles may be added to the list: Anthony C. Spearing, 
Criticism and Medieval Poetry (London, 1964), 47-54; Robert 5. Haller, “Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale 
and the Use of Rhetoric,” Modern Philology, 62 (1964-65), 285-295. 


118 D. KELLY 


as Chaucer’s words, and particularly the parody in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale 
of Geoffrey’s use of apostrophe, seem to ridicule the instruction found in the 
Poetria nova, it has ibeen generally assumed that Geoffrey’s influence on 
“good” authors was minimal or even negative. Joined to this assumption 
is the widely held op‘nion that neither Geoffrey nor the other authors of 
arts of poetry had anything significant to say on the narrative composition 
of the poem. Both arguments led to the belief that the poeiriae possess little 
real value for the study and interpretation of medieval poetry. The influen- 
ce of Geoffrey’s treatise seemed confined to the classroom, with all this 
notion suggests regarding stale, uninspired learning pounded into the heads 
of wretched schoolboys who, like Chaucer, came to despise or mock what 
they learned, or simply forgot it, or, worse still, became professors and 
carried on the same dull tradition. 

However, a closer look at the Poetria nova and Geoffrey’s other treatises 
shows that the evidence for his faults is incomplete and therefore unfairly 
censorious.’ For one thing, his treatment of composition is not so incomplete 
as was supposed. The instruction in the Poetria nova on the choice and ar- 
rangement of the materia checks any inclination the poet may have to be 
careless in the conception of his poem, and demands clarity and order in 
the basic plan. Nor should the subsequent disposition, amplification, and 
ornamentation of the poem be indulged in for their own sake. Rather 
Geoffrey insists that these steps in composition be subordinated to the origi- 
nal plan, and thus preserve its unity and balance. Careful composition 
according to such principles could inspire well-written poems, poems ar- 
ranged and embellished by a thoughtful and sensitive choice from among 
the means of arrangement and embellishment proposed in the Poetria nova. 
It is the purpose of this paper to show how common Geoffrey’s ideas on 
composition were among writers contemporary with and subsequent to bim, 
and to show the relevance of this instruction to the interpretation of medieval 
narrative poetry, particularly narrative poetry written from the twelfth 
century on. 

Geoffrey belonged to a literary movement that included writers in Latin 
and the vernacular; authors of various arts of poetry, of letter-writing, and 
of preaching ; and teachers in a number of disciplines. Many of these writers 
were harshly attacked by such critics as John of Salisbury, particularly 
for their ideas regarding philosophy and logic.® Yet they flourished in the 


4 See my studies, “The Scope of the Treatment of Composition in the Twelfth- and Thirteenth- 
Century Arts of Poetry,” Speculum, 41 (1966), 261-278; Sens and Conjointure in the Chevalier de la 
Charrette (The Hague, 1966), 88-94. 

5 See Richard McKeon, “Rhetoric in the Middle Ages,” Speculum, 17 (1942), 25-29; Harry 
Caplan, “Classical Rhetoric and the Mediaeval Theory of Preaching,” in Raymond F. Howes, ed. 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 119 


twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and their influence on writing remained 
strong long after this time. To determine the nature and the extent of 
Geoffrey’s influence, it would be best therefore to search among these writers. 
Many of them, no matter how far removed from Geoffrey’s their fields 
may seem at first glance, do offer parallels, explanations, and illustrations 
of the instruction contained in the Poetria nova. We may arrange the discus- 
sion under three headings, corresponding to the main divisions of rhetoric 
—— invention, disposition, ornamentation — found in the Poetria nova itself. 

Before beginning, it would be well to stress the fact that we are concerned 
essentially with the prevalence of ideas on composition found in Geoffrey 
of Vinsauf, and not merely with the direct influence of his instruction. In- 
deed, if we can demonstrate that the ideas in the Poetria nova are expressed 
by others who did not know his writings or who did not closely imitate them, 
the argument for a common conception of composition in the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries would acquire additional support, and we may be less 
reluctant to apply Geoffrey’s instruction to the interpretation of medieval 
narrative verse. 


INVENTION 


The instruction in the Poetria nova regarding the conception and arrange- 
ment of the material of the poem is brief, but important. The presentation 
is divided into three main parts: 

I. Conception of the materia (vss. 43-59). 

a. Method of the architect in planning the construction of a building: careful 
planning before actual construction (vss. 43-48). 

b. Application of the architect’s method to the construction of the poem: careful 
planning before taking up the pen to write (vss. 48-59). 


II. Subordination of subsequent disposition and ornamentation to the plan of the 
invented materia (vss. 60-70). 


JII. Order in the poem (vss. 71-86). 


a. General statement regarding the choice of beginning, middle, and conclusion 
(vss. 71-76). 


b. Illustration: the careful plan of the Poetria nova itself (vss. 77-86). 


The injunction to subordinate the subsequent steps in composition to the 
original plan is frequently expressed in the Poetria nova, as will be shown 


Historical Studies of Rhetoric and Rhetoricians (Ithaca, N. Y., 1961), 72-76; Karl Manitius, Gunzo 
“Epistola ad Augienses” und Anselm von Besate “Rhetorimachia,” Monumenta Germaniae historica: 
Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 2 (Weimar, 1958), 75-76; J. W. H. Atkins, English 
Literary Criticism: The Medieval Phase (Cambridge, New York, 1943), 94. 


120 D. KELLY 


below. Otherwise there is little additional discussion of invention in this 
treatise. 

Geoffrey’s Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi contains nothing 
corresponding precisely to vss. 43-86 in the Poetria nova. It skips over inven- 
tion and begins with disposition according to natural and artificial order. 
Part of this may be due to the more elementary level of the Documentum, 
which was provided for schoolboys concerned mainly with elaborating in 
verse upon material given to them for purposes of exercise. This is obvious 
from a statement towards the end of the treatise: “Post praedicta est notan- 
dum quod difficile est materiam communem et usitatam convenienter et 
bene tractare” (p. 309, § 132). Geoffrey’s opinion regarding the relative 
difficulty and value of composition based on materia taken from other authors 
was Common among his contemporaries and doubtless accounts for the fre- 
quent allusions to materia that one finds in Latin and vernacular writing. 
How closely the poets might follow their source is illustrated by a passage 
from the Prologue to Vitalis of Blois’ Aulularia, in which the author justifies 
making certain small changes in his version of the tale, and, at the same 
time, defends mixing the styles by the argument that he is only following 
his materia. 


Qui releget Plautum mirabitur altera forsan 

Nomina personis quam mea scripta notant. 
Causa mea est facto: uult uerba domestica uersus : 

Grandia plus aequo nomina metra timent. 
Sic ego mutata decisaue nomina feci 

Posse pati uersus: res tamen una manet. 
Arguet hoc aliquis mea quod comedia fatum 

Nominet et stellas, atque amet alta nimis. 
Nesciuisse ferent humilemque ad grandia stulte 

Euasisse stilum. Crimina Plautus habet. 
Absoluar culpa: Plautum sequor. Et tamen ipsa 

Materie series exigit alta sibi. 

(vss. 11-22) 


6 Vitalis of Blois, Aulularia, in Gustave Cohen, La “Comédie” latine en France au XIIe siécle, 2 vols. 
(Paris, 1931), 1, 74-75; stilum here refers to the three styles, each style being distinguished, at this 
time, by the materia rather than the means of embellishment. The mixing of styles was forbidden 
in the poetriae; see note 47 below. — So frequent are allusions to the materia in Latin and vernacular 
poems that it is unnecessary to cite here any more specific examples as proof. For French poems, 
see the examples given by Rubin Halpersohn, Uber die Einleitungen im altfranzésischen Kunstepos 
(Berlin, 1911), 33-44; for German poems, see Bruno Boesch, Die Kunstanschauung in der mittelhoch- 
deutschen Dichtung (Bern, Leipzig, 1936), 75-80 and 192-195. The practice is found in Latin imita- 
tions of Ovid, medieval Latin epic, saints’ lives, and the medieval Latin “Comedy”; see Paul 
Lehmann, Pseudo-antike Literatur des Mittelalters, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, 13 (Leipzig, 
Berlin, 1927; Darmstadt, 1964), 4-5; A. Boutemy, ed. “La Version parisienne du poéme de Simon 
Chévre d’Or sur la Guerre de Troie,” Seriptorium, 1 (1946-47), vss. 493-508 (p. 227); Ernst Robert 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 121 


For, Geoffrey continues in the place cited just above, “quanto difficilius, 
tanto laudabilius est bene tractare materiam talem, scilicet communem et 
usitatam, quam materiam aliam, scilicet novam et inusitatam.” As Paul 
Lehmann has written, andashe has demonstrated in a number of his studies, 
“Die Geschichte aller mittelalterlichen Literatur, insbesondere die des 
lateinischen Schrifttums im Abendlande, ist fiir mehrere Jahrhunderte in 
hohem Masse eine Geschichte der Aufnahme, Verarbeitung und Nachah- 
mung fremden Gutes.”’ 

The earliest romans in French tend to conform to Geoffrey’s restrictions, 
for they are based almost exclusively on known Latin sources. Principally 
between 1150 and 1170, there was a rapid succession of poems based on va- 
rious accounts of the life of Alexander the Great, on Statius’ Thebais, on 
Vergil’s Aeneid, and on the story of the Trojan War by pseudo-Dares and 
pseudo-Dictys. Wace’s Brut, which came out during the same period, is 
itself a reworking of the Latin chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Ovidand 
Latin adaptations of Ovid served as materia for the Old French poems Pyra- 
me et ΤῊ δέ and Narcisse as well as for Chrétien de Troyes’ Philomena and his 
other lost Ovidian poems. Here is the subject matter common both in 
compositional exercises in twelfth and thirteenth century schools,* and in 
some important medieval Latin poems: Walter of Chatillon’s Alexandreis, 
Simon Chévre d’Or’s Ilias, and Joseph of Exeter’s De bello trojano.® The 


Curtius, “Der Archipoeta und der Stil mittellateinischer Dichtung,” Romanische Forschungen, 54 
(1940), 143; E. Faral, “Le Fabliau latin au moyen Age,” Romania, 50 (1924), 380. Lehmann’s 
study offers a useful introduction to the problems connected with imitations, falsifications, and 
misunderstandings of Classical and pseudo-Classical works during the Middle Ages. And he reveals 
how extensive copying and imitation of Classical models was in the twelfth and thirteenth centu- 
ries: “Fiir uns Mittellateiner ist die Betrachtung und Wiirdigung der seit dem 12. Jahrhundert 
starker in Erscheinung tretenden Neigung, antike und pseudo-antike Erzahlungen, Sentenzen 
oder auch nur Namen zu bringen, wichtig unter anderem deswegen, weil wir so manche Werke 
der Erzahlungs- und der Erziehungsliteratur des spateren Mittelalters verstehen lernen” (p. 27). 

7 Die Parodie im Mittelalter, 2d ed. (Stuttgart, 1963), 2. 

8 See Faral, “Le Manuscrit 511 du‘Hunterian Museum’ de Glasgow. Notes sur le mouvement 
poétique et histoire des études littéraires en France et en Angleterre entre les années 1150 et 1225”, 
Studi medievali, 9 (1936), 21-22, 32-33, 34-35, 43-51, 114-117; Recherches sur les sources latines des 
contes et romans courtois du moyen dge (Paris, 1913), 4; Lehmann, Pseudo-antike, 2-15. 

9 A number of authors dreamed of writing, or were asked to write, an epic poem in the grand 
manner, but they despaired of being able to complete such an undertaking; see Dietrich, “Pyramus 
and Thisbe,” in Lehmann, Pseudo-antike, 37, vss. 27-38; Alphanus of Salerno, “Carmina,” in Migne, 
PL 147, 1221B; Die Gedichte des Archipoeta, eds. Heinrich Watenphul and Heinrich Frefeld (Heidel- 
berg, 1958), 57-58. This is of course a variety of the Bescheidenheitstopos; see Ernst Robert Curtius, 
“Dichtung und Rhetorik im Mittelalter,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fir Literaturwissenschaft und 
Geistesgeschichte, 16 (1938), 456-459 and 471-472. But a topos could reflect reality; it was no easy 
task to compose a long narrative poem, as Walter of Chatillon points out in the Prologue to the 
Alexandreis. 


122 D. KELLY 


process did not work in reverse to any large extent however; that is, there 
are few Latin poems based on vernacular material. The Latin ver- 
sions of the Arthurian legend, for example, are, apart from pseudo-histori- 
cal chronicles like that of Geoffrey of Monmouth, insignificant in number;1° 
and Oriental material is confined largely to tales based on the Historia 
Septem sapientum and similar collections. 

But the vernacular authors soon began to seek new subjects, new materia 
to put into verse, forgetful of the admonition to confine themselves to 
traditional Latin sources, and doubtless influenced by their audiences’ desire 
for new tales. The sudden and persistent popularity of a variety of Celtic 
and Eastern tales is one happy result of this tendency. We may observe it 
as early as Chrétien, who in Cligés, an essentially Byzantine tale with Arthu- 
rian trappings, mentions his now lost poem about Marc and Iseut alongside 
the adaptations from Ovid and the Arthurian romance Erec et Enide. The 
twelfth century poetess Marie de France justifies versifying new matiére in 
her Lais by the argument that the older Classical material had been ex- 
hausted. 


- comengai a penser 
D’aukune bone estoire faire 
E de latin en romaunz traire; 
Mais ne me fust guaires de pris: 
Itant se sunt altre entremis. 
De lais pensai, k’oi aveie. 
Plusors en ai oi conter, 
Nes voil laisser ne oblier. 
-Rimez en ai e fait ditié. 

(“Prologue,” vss. 28-33, 39-41)! 


And in the next century Guillaume de Lorris even boasts of composing the 
Roman de la Rose with matiére never used before. But the majority of ver- 
nacular authors seldom went so far in the choice of their materia. Like their 
mentors in the arts of poetry, they are careful to base their writing on some 
given materia, whether that materia is in Latin, French, or some other lan- 
guage accessible to them. 


10 See Roger Sherman Loomis, ed. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1959), 472-479, 

11 Jean de Ghellinck, L’Essor de la littérature latine au ΧΗ" siécle, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1946), 2, 37-38; 
F. J. E. Raby, A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, 24 ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1957), 
2, 54-55; G. Cohen, 1, 115-116, 157-159, 217-218; 2, 87-88. 

12 Ed, Jeanne Lods (Paris, 1959). 

18 Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Ernest Langlois, 5 vols. (Paris, 1914-24), vss. 39 and 2066. This is a 
topos in medieval literature; see Curtius, Europdische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalier, 2d ed. 
(Bern, 1954), 95-96. ᾿ 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 123 


Following the injunction in the Documentum to use materia that has been 
frequently used before, Geoffrey gives a number of rules based upon his 
interpretation of some lines in Horace’s Art of Poetry. These rules cover 
invention, disposition, amplification, and the three styles. Those of impor- 
tance for invention are more specific than the instruction contained in the 
Poetria nova, and may therefore serve to elucidate certain special problems 
that come up in this phase of composition. The first rule has to do with 
changes to be made in the content or the order of the materia: 

. ne sequamur vestigia verborum, et hoc est intelligendum quantum ad 
corpus materiae; quia, si ceteri qui tractant materiam communem prius hanc 
partem materiae verbis exprimunt, postmodum illam, tertio tertiam, et sic 
deinceps, nos non debemus haec vestigia verborum sequi, ut illam partem 

materiae quam praemittunt praemittamus, et sic deinceps, sed universitatem 
materiae speculantes ibi dicamus aliquid ubi dixerunt nihil, et ubi dixerunt 
aliquid, nos nihil; quod etiam prius, nos posterius, et e converso; et sic com- 
munia proprie dicemus. (pp. 309-310, § 134). 


These changes would of course be made with due consideration for the 
unity and harmony of the materia, as Geoffrey stipulates in the Poetria nova. 
Two additional precepts are devoted to the beginning and end of the materia: 
each must fit properly into the rest of the poem. 


1, “ne praemittamus tale principium quod sit nimis arrogans et superciliosum.” 
(p. 310, § 136). 
2. “ut bene incepta fine debito concludamus. Et sic vitabimus vitium quod 


dicitur ‘magnus finis’.” (p. 316, § 162). 


These rules are clearly applications of the appeal in the Poetria nova for care- 
ful arrangement of all parts of the materia so that they coalesce perfectly in 
the completed work. 


Circinus interior mentis praecircinet omne 
Materiae spatium. Certus praclimitet ordo 
Unde praearripiat cursum stylus. 
(vss. 55-57)¥4 


Similarly, after explaining how the beginning, middle, and conclusion of 
the materia should be handled, Geoffrey generalizes in the following way: 


Omni parte sui modus omnis carmen honoret, 
Ne qua parte labet, ne quam patiatur eclipsim. 
(vss. 75-76) 


14 Chaucer echoes these lines in the House of Fame, vss. 523-528 and 1101-05; J. M. Manly, 
“Chaucer and the Rhetoricians,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 12 (1926), 109, argues that these 
words are indicative of a turning point in Chaucer’s conception of composition, that he is here 
moving away from the traditional methods taught by Geoffrey and the arts of poetry ! 


124 D. KELLY 


Geoffrey’s conception is common in many respects before and after him. 
It is derived in the essentials from Horace’s Art of Poetry, as we have seen in 
the Documentum, as well as from commentaries on Horace, as may be obser- 
ved in Geoffrey’s “medieval” interpretation of the three styles on the basis 
of the three classes of society: aristocratic, middle, and plebeian (p. 312, 
§ 145). The core of his interpretation of composition is found in one line of 
Horace’s Art of Poetry: “primo ne medium, medio ne discrepet imum” 
(vs. 152). The admonition is not unusual in the Middle Ages; for example: 

Pulchriter inveniat, inventaque narret honeste. 
Fini principium sit par.... 
(vss. 90-91)35 


Even the length of the materia made little difference in the application of 
Geoffrey’s rules. In the Documentum, Geoffrey explains how to treat materia 
so brief that it consists of but one word: lego and doceo, taken as the subject 
of a poem or letter. This is of course an extreme example, used mainly as 
a convenient illustration for the classroom. Nevertheless, in the light of the 
choice of such simple materia, Conrad of Mure’s instruction on composition 
takes on added significance, and may, within the framework of Geoffrey’s 
theory of composition, be used as an illustration of the method found in 
both the Documentum and the Poetria nova. 


Multiplex [narratio] est, in qua plura narrantur. ibi prosator debet uidere, 
qualiter diuersas orationes ordinet et coniungat: scilicet quid in primo, quid in 
medio, quid in fine decenter ordinetur.1* 


In conformity with the same principle, John of Garland warns prospective 
writers against the following faults in the plan of their materia: 


1. “incongrua parcium ordinacio vel disposicio” (p. 919).17 


15 Charles Fierville, “Notice et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothéque de Saint-Omer,” 
Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothéque Nationale, 31, 1 (1884), 135; for additional examples, 
see Speculum, 41, 276, note 58. 

16 “Summa de arte prosandi,” in Ludwig Rockinger, ed. Briefsteller und Formelbiicher des eilften 
bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., Burt Franklin Research and Source Works Series, 10 (New York, 
1961), 468, reprinted from Quellen und Erérterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte, 9,1 (Mu- 
nich, 1863); references to Conrad of Mure will be based on this edition. See also John of Garland, 
“Poetria magistri Johannis Anglici de arte prosayca metrica et rithmica,” ed. Giovanni Mari, 
Romanische Forschungen, 13 (1902), 887; and Conrad of Hirsau, Dialogus super auctores, ed. G. Schepss 
(Wurzburg, 1889), 64, lines 10-18. It is evident not only from the passage in Conrad of Mure, but 
also from Eberhard of Béthune’s Graecismus that similar principles governed the choice and arrange- 
ment of different parts of the sentence and of different parts of the plot. Eberhard uses Horace’s 
instruction in the Art of Poetry regarding faults in narrative structure to criticize bad syntax; see 
the Graecismus, ed. J. Wrobel (Breslau, 1887), 1-2. 

17 Romanische Forschungen, 13; references to John of Garland will be based on this edition. 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 125 


2 “incongrua materie variacio” by the introduction of comic elements into a 
serious subject, and vice-versa. (p. 921) 
3. “Finis infelix” or “inconveniens operis conclusio.” (p. 921) 


Likewise, Conrad of Mure, in the place cited just above, gives the fol- 
lowing rules: 


1. “Narratio... uiciatur... ex nimia prolixitate..., id est dum quis propositum 
incipit a nimis remoto;” and 


2. “cum ordo rei geste nequaquam per ordinem narratur.” 
Finally, the vernacular poets share the same conception of composition. 


L’estoire d’Alixandre vos veul par vers traitier 

En romans qu’a gent laie doive auques porfitier; 

Mais tels ne set finer qui bien set commencier, 

Ne mostrer bele fin por s’ovraigne essaucier, 

Ains resamble l’asnon en son versefier, 

Qui biaus est quant il naist et mainte gent ont chier, 

Com plus croist, plus laidist et resamble avresier. 
(Branch I, vss. 30-36)"* 


Gérard d’Amiens in Escanor speaks of following his matiére and still ar- 
ranging it in a way that makes the narrative more pleasing: 


... des or voeil conmencier 
a dire le conte tout outre 
enssi com la matere moustre. 
En escrit truis ci en ceste oevre, 
si con li contes le descuevre; 
(vss. 58-62) 
and: 


Et qui bel conmence et define, 
Puevre en est plus bele et plus fine 
et de plus grant noblece asez. 
(vss. 1-3) 


Another author affirms: 


Molt voi de gent qui rimer voelent 
Et lor entente metre i soelent 

As biaus dis fere et controver, 
Mes molt se doit bien porpenser 
Qui s’entente a rimer velt metre 
Qu’il s’en sache bien entremetre 


18 The Medieval French ‘Roman d’Alexandre’ : Version of Alexandre de Paris, Elliott Monographs, 38 
(Princeton, N. J., 1949), 155-156. 

19 Ed, H. Michelant, in the Bibliothek des litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, 178 (Tiibingen, 
1886) ; cf. Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes (New York, 1949), 157. 


126 D. KELLY 


Qw’il puist rimer en tel maniere 
Que par devant ne par derriere 
N’en soit gabez ne escharnis. 
(vss. 12-17)2° 


Similar statements are found in Middle High German poems of this time.?! 

Geoffrey’s comparison of poetic composition with architectural planning, 
analogous to Horace’s comparison of the work of poet and painter, is a 
commonplace before Geoffrey, and in a variety of contexts. Conrad of 
Hirsau likens Donatus’ grammatical writings to the foundation of the house 
of learning upon which subsequent studies are built.22 Similarly, Hugh of 
Saint Victor writes of the composition of the Bible: “illud ad memoriam 
revocare non inutile est, quod in aedificiis fieri conspicitur, ubi primum 
quidem fundamentum ponitur, dehinc fabrica superaedificatur, ad ulti- 
mum consummato opere domus colore superducto vestitur.”2* And Brunet- 
to Latini lifted Geoffrey’s words directly out of the Poetria nova and trans- 
lated them into French for Li Livres dou tresor : 


Por quoi je di que quant tu vieus bien faire ton 
prologue, il te covient tot avant consirer ta matire 
et connoistre la nature dou fait et sa maniere. 

Fai donc a l’essample de celui ki vieut maisoner, 
car il ne cort pas a l’oevre hastivement, ains le 
mesure tot avant a la ligne de son cuer, et com- 
prent en sa memore trestot l’ordre et la figure 

de Ia maison. Et tu gardes que ta langue ne soit 
courans a parler, ne la mains a l’escrire, ne 
comence [ms. T: commete; cf. Geoffrey: “committe”] 
pas Pun ne l’autre a cours de fortune. Mais 

ton sens tiegne en sa main l’office de chascune, 

en tel maniere que la matire soit longuement a 
la balance de ton cuer. Et dedens lui pregne 1’or- 
dre de sa voie et de sa fin, car a ce que les 
besoignes du siecle sont diverses, te covient a 
parler diversement, et a chascune selonc sa 
matire.™* 


20 Floriant et Florete, ed. Harry F. Williams, University of Michigan Publications in Language 
and Literature, 23 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1947). 

21 Boesch, 75-76. 

22 Dialogus, 31, lines 19-20. 

23 Didascalicon, ed. Charles Henry Buttimer (Washington, D. C., 1939), 113; cf. also 116, and 
Hugh’s amplification of the topos with reference to the Bible on 119-120. . 

24. Ἐ4, Francis J. Carmody, University of California Publications in Modern Philology, 22 
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1948), 335, §§ 2-3. Brunetto uses the same image in La Rettorica, ed. Fran- 
cesco Maggini (Florence, 1915), 51-53, especially xxviii, 2-3, and xxix, 3. 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 127 


The image reappears in Middle High German poems in connection with 
composition.25 The similarity between architectural planning and poetic 
composition is also a commonplace in Scholastic philosophy.°* 

One may therefore conclude that medieval writers did have common 
ideas regarding poetic composition. Derived largely from an elaboration 
and, to a certain extent, a reinterpretation of certain passages in Horace’s 
Art of Poetry, and metaphorically considered analogous to the planning and 
construction of a building, this conception of composition found its most 
thoroughgoing treatment in Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s writings, and particularly 
in his Poetria nova. As a result the Poetria nova itself assumed an importance 
comparable to that enjoyed by certain theoretical writings of antiquity that 
had been handed down to the Middle Ages. Just as the Rhetorica ad Heren- 
nium and Cicero’s De inventione formed, respectively, the rhetorica nova and 
the rhetorica vetus, so the Poetria nova of Geoffrey was linked to the poetria 
vetus — Horace’s Art of Poetry — as a standard treatise on poetics. Geof- 
frey’s influence was thus extensive. We have seen it in Chaucer, in Brunet- 
to Latini; indeed, we may well surmise that Dante was acquainted with the 
Poetria nova through Brunetto, and that its influence, direct or indirect, is 
not absent from the careful construction of the Divine Comedy.2” But let us 
briefly consider a few striking examples of that influence in vernacular 
narrative poetry, and try to arrive at a more precise idea of its extent. 

The invention of the materia which the poet will arrange and embellish 
in completing his work involves a number of steps. First, in almost all in- 
stances, there is a given source, but a source that may be in various states 
of refinement, from the finished poems of Ovid to the scattered fragments 
of popular tales that went into Arthurian romance. We may, for the sake 
of classification, use Matthew of Vendéme’s convenient terminology to 
distinguish between the two principal kinds of source: materia exsecuta or 
pertractata, that is materia already in verse (Ars versificatoria, pp. 180-184, 
§§ 3-15), viz. the Ovidian tales; and materia illibata, or materia not yet in 
verse (pp. 184-187, §§ 16-31), viz. the various late Latin prose accounts of 
the life of Alexander or the Arthurian and Byzantine material. Materia 
exsecuta presented the poets with greater problems than materia illibata, ac- 
cording to Matthew and Geoffrey, because the poet must fashion from it 
as good a poem as the original, and yet one which is not a servile imitation. 


25 Hennig Brinkmann, Zu Wesen und Form mittelalterlicher Dichtung (Halle, 1928), 7, note 3; 
Boesch, 24-25. 

26 Brinkmann, 8-10. 

27 See Aristide Marigo, ed. De vulgari eloquentia (Florence, 1957), pp. xxxvii-xxxviii. Dante 
expressly counsels study of the poetriae in the De vulgari.eloqueniia, II, iv, 2, pp. 186-188; see also 
Marigo’s notes, 188-189. 


128 D. KELLY 


Rearrangement of the content, shift in emphasis through expansion, abbre- 
viation, and ornamentation were the most common means employed in 
this form of composition. Simon Chévre d’Or’s various abbrevations of 
Vergil’s Aeneid are illustrative of this method of composition. The basic 
materia should however be followed closely. Matthew says, for example: 
“Si exsecuta fuerit [materia], juxta tenorem poeticae narrationis erit 
procedendum” (p. 180, 83); only certain changes in style as well as additions 
to the content that improve or elaborate upon the meaning of the poem are 
acceptable. 
Such close adherence to the materia is acknowledged by Benoit de Sainte- 

Maure in the Roman de Troie: 

Ceste estoire n’est pas usee, 

N’en guaires lieus nen est trovee: 

Ja retraite ne fust ancore [in French !], 

Mais Beneeiz de Sainte More 

L’a contrové e fait e dit 

E o sa main les moz escrit, 

Ensi tailliez, ensi curez, 

Ensi asis, ensi posez, 

Que plus ne meins n’i a mestier. 

Ci vueil lestoire comencier: 

Le latin sivrai e la letre, 

Nule autre rien n’i voudrai metre, 

S’ensi non com jol truis escrit. 

Ne di mie qu’aucun bon dit 

N’i mete, se faire le sai, 


Mais la matire en ensivrai. 
(vss. 129-144)28 


The vernacular authors who based their narrative poems on Celtic rather 
than Latin sources may have found it easier to be original, but the problem 
of finding and arranging their materia in a satisfactory way was greater. The 
tales of wandering Breton story-tellers, or the books containing their tales, 
do not seem to have made the quest for clarity and order easy for writers 
accustomed from the schools to follow closely the materia. In this type of 
materia — materia illibata — confusion, contradiction, excessive variety, dis- 
order, and fantastic personages and events were common. We may observe 
the difficulties reflected in the words of the authors themselves. Those who 
related the Tristan legend repeat, one after the other, the same complaint. 
Thomas d’Angleterre: “Seignurs, cest cunte est mult divers” (Ὁ 835) ;2° 
Gottfried von Strassburg: 


28 Te Roman de Troie, ed. Léopold Constans, 6 vols. (Paris, 1904-12). 
39 Les Fragments du roman de Tristan, ed. Bartina H. Wind (Leyden, 1950). 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 129 


Ich weiz wol, ir ist vil gewesen, 
die von Tristande hant gelesen; 
und ist ir doch niht vil gewesen, 
die von im rehte haben gelesen. 
(vss. 131-134)? 


Why ἢ “sin [i. e. those who wrote before Gottfried, with the exception of 
Thomas] sprachen in der rihte niht” (vs. 149). Gottfried followed Thomas’ 
poem, with occasional additions from other sources. One of these sources 
was Eilhart von Oberg’s Tristrant. Eilhart used a lost French poem which 
belongs to a tradition different from that represented by Thomas and Gott- 
fried. Yet the problem presented by the sources was no different: 


nu saget lichte ein ander man, 
ez st andirs hir umme komen: 
daz habe wir alle wol vornomen, 
daz man daz ungeliche saget: 
Eilhart des giten zig habet, 


daz ez recht alsus erging. 
(vss. 9452-57)54 


And Béroul, writing in French but in the same tradition as Eilhart: 


Li conteor dient qu’Yvain 
Firent nier, qui sont vilain; 
N’en sevent mie bien l’estoire, 
Berox l’a mex en sen memoire, 
Trop ert Tristran preuz et cortois 
A ocirre gent de tes lois. 
(vss. 1265-70)" 


This is the sort of difficulty spoken of by Chrétien de Troyes in the Prologue 
to Erec et Enide: 


d’Erec, le fil Lac, est li contes, 
que devant rois et devant contes 
depecier et corronpre suelent 
cil qui de conter vivre vuelent. 
(vss. 19-22)58 


Chrétien applied himself to this material and made of it the “molt bele 


conjointure” (vs. 14) that we find in Erec. Thus, from his Breton materza 
illibata, Chrétien selected and arranged certain elements into a pleasing 


30 Tristan und Isold, ed. Friedrich Ranke (Berlin, 1930). 

31 Eilhart von Oberge, ed. Franz Lichtenstein, Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Cultur- 
geschichte der germanischen Vélker, 19 (Strasbourg, 1877). 

32 Te Roman de Tristan, ed. Ernest Muret, 4th ed. (Paris, 1957). 

33 Ed. Mario Roques (Paris, 1955). 


130 -  D. KELLY 


and meaningful poem. The composition of the French and German Tristan 
poems was no different in the essentials. 

But this process of extracting and unifying the materia to be used in the 
poem was not simple. Thomas d’Angleterre discusses the problem in a 
well known passage in his Tyistan. After describing the diversity of his 
matiére, he continues: 

E pur go luni par mes vers 
E di en tant cum est mester 


E le surplus voil relesser. 
(D 836-838) 


Gottfried elaborates upon this process, indicating that his materia is in fact 
Thomas’ poem, but that he also used other sources (vss. 155-159). There- 
upon he applied to this material the careful scrutiny that Geoffrey demanded 
of writers, sifting and organizing it until he had fashioned a well-composed 
and meaningful poem. 

und begunde mich des pinen, 

daz ich in siner rihte 

rihte dise tihte. 

(vss. 160-162) 
The initial stages and the conclusion of the process of invention are clearly 
described by Conrad of Mure when he distinguishes between materia remota 
and materia propinqua. 
materia remota sunt rudes lapides et inexpoliti, et ligna nondum dolata 


nondum leuigata. set materia propinqua sunt lapides et ligna bene preparata, 
ut in structura domus prout expedit conponantur. (p. 441) 


The choice, polishing up, and arranging of the different elements of the 
materia, taken together, constitute Geoffrey’s first step in the composition 
of the narrative poem — it is the invention of the materia of the poem. After 
this has been accomplished, the poet may proceed to put the materia into 
words, that is, into verse. How this is done Geoffrey describes in the next 
two parts of the Poetria nova: disposition and ornamentation. 


DIsPOsITION 


It is not necessary to go into this subject extensively here, since Faral 
and others have analyzed more than adequately Geoffrey’s contribution. 
Briefly, disposition may be divided into two parts: the use of natural and 
artificial order, and the use of amplification and abbreviation. The two 
techniques should be carefully distinguished from invention. The poet 
decides first what the beginning, middle, and conclusion of his materia will 
be; this initial decision is invention. Next he decides in what order he will 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 131 


present the different parts of the materia in the finished poem, that is, he 
decides what the final disposition of the poem will be. 
Ordo bifurcat iter: tum limite nititur artis, 


Tum sequitur stratam naturae. 
(vss. 87-88) 


Thus the natural order of the materia is maintained, or it is rearranged in 
an artificial and presumably more pleasing manner, or in a way that suits 
better the purposes of the author. 

Similarly, once the poet has decided what in his materia needs to be stres- 
sed or elaborated upon, what needs to be toned down or shortened, he 
must know in what ways this may be accomplished. The means of ampli- 
fication and abbreviation are his answer. Geoffrey’s constant concern bow- 
ever is that the amplification and abbreviation be necessary or, in effect, 
“called for” by the materia, and that the specific means of amplification or 
abbreviation chosen be appropriate to the particular part of the materia 
in which it is to be used. 

Non absque labore 
Sunt passus utriusque viae: si vis bene duci, 


Te certo committe duci; subscripta revolve: 
Ipsa stylum ducent et utrimque docenda docebunt. 
Hominis manus interioris 
Ducit ut amplificet vel curtet. 
(vss. 209-212, 217-218) 


Some of the faults of inappropriate amplification and abbreviation are 
specified in the Documentum. 
1. “ne moremur ubi moram faciunt alii; sed, ubi moram faciunt, transeamus, 


ubi transeunt, moram faciamus.” (p. 309, § 133) This has to do, Geoffrey 
explains, with the use of descriptions and digressions. 


2. “ut de materia non transeamus ad talem articulum unde reverti nesciamus ad 
materiam.” (p. 310, ὃ 135) This is an inordinate digression.®° 


3. “videamus, si velimus uti digressione, ut ipsa digressio sit competens et ad rem 
pertinens, et ita vitabimus vitium illud quod dicitur incompetens digressio.” 
(p. 314, § 156) 

4. “obscura brevitas.” (p. 313, § 152) 


The distinction between natural and artificial order was too common in 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for Geoffrey to be able to make any 
really significant contribution on the subject. Nevertheless, some authors 
admired Geoffrey’s presentation of the subject enough to imitate closely 


34 See also vss. 455-460, 529-531, 557-561. 
35 OF. Poetria nova, vss. 529-530; and Speculum, 41, 273, note 41. 


132 D. KELLY 


or transcribe outright his instruction. John of Garland, Conrad of Mure, 
Bene of Florence, and Brunetto Latini prescribe essentially the same plan 
as Geoffrey.°* Generally, all these treatises recommend the use of artificial 
order in preference to natural order, and the narrative poets of the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries tended to follow their advice, particularly in the use 
of proverbs and exempla as introductions to the narrative. Artificial order 
as it appears in Vergil’s Aeneid, the work most often cited as an illustration 
of the procedure, is rare. One good example, however, is the beginning of 
Chrétien’s Yoain, in which the knight Calogrenant relates his adventures 
at the fountain of Broceliande to Guenevere and some other knights. Chré- 
tien’s arrangement is not unlike Vergil’s, who has Aeneis describe before 
Dido and the Carthaginian court the destruction of Troy and his subsequent 
wanderings. Both poems precede the “flashback” with a certain amount of 
court activity. There is of course nothing in the Yvain corresponding to the 
storm and shipwreck in Book I of the Aeneid. The author of the Old French 
Enéas preserves the artificial order of Vergil’s poem, and has Aeneas relate 
the Fall of Troy and his subsequent adventures (the latter considerably 
abbreviated) after his arrival at Carthage. But he reduces the significance 
of the procedure by prefixing to the poem a summary of the events during 
the siege and capture of Troy, and thus makes the order of the poem virtual- 
ly natural. In the arrangement of the beginning of the Middle High Ger- 
man version, Heinrich von Veldeke follows the plan of the Old French 
poem.®” John of Garland added the prologue to the variety of artificial 


36 For a summary of Geoffrey’s and John of Garland’s instruction, see Faral, Aris poétiques, 58-59. 
In Brunetto Latini, see Trésor, 327-329. Conrad of Mure gives a shorter list: natural and artificial 
order from the middle and from the end (441-442). Bene of Florence in the Candelabrum trans- 
cribes the same alternatives as Geoffrey. For statements regarding Bene’s treatise, I have used a 
microfilm of the Bibl. Nat. lat. 15082; Bene’s discussion of natural and artificial order is found on 
folio 111. It would be useful to have a critical edition of the Candelabrum, which contains so much 
of the instruction of the thirteenth century regarding the dictamen, poetry, and oratory. Bene knew 
Geoffrey’s Poetria nova; see Charles Sears Baldwin, Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (New York, 1928), 
217 and note 21. Since the Candelabrum is dated ca. 1220-23, it contains the earliest known allusion 
to Geoffrey’s treatise, and antedates 1250, the date given by M. Manitius as the earliest allusion to 
Geoffrey’s work (III, 755). One sees by this fact how quickly the Poetria nova became popular. On 
Bene and his work, see Baldwin, 213-223 (contains a summary of those parts of the Candelabrum 
influenced by Roman treatises on the dictamen, but not those influenced by Geoffrey and other 
French writers); A. Gaudenzi, “Sulla cronologia delle opere dei dettatori bolognesi da Buon- 
compagno a Bene di Lucca,” Bulleitino dell Istituto storico italiano, 14 (1895), 150-162 (summary from 
a manuscript of the Candelabrum’s contents, 151-152); B. Hauréau, Notices et extraits de quelques 
manuserits latins de la Bibliothéque Nationale, 6 vols. (Paris, 1890-93), 4, 259-262. 

3? This is not to say that Veldeke’s poem is a servile imitation of French matiére. There are signi- 
ficant differences in the composition of the two poems; see Marie-Luise Dittrich, Die ‘ Eneide’ 
Heinrichs von Veldeke. I. Teil: Quellenkritischer Vergleich mit dem Roman d’Eneas und Vergils Aeneis 
(Wiesbaden, 1966). 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 133 


beginnings proposed by Geofirey; such a prologue should contain a sum- 
mary of the narrative, that is the materia of the poem. Prologues of this sort 
are common in the medieval Latin “Comedy,”** and may also be found at 
the outset of Benoit de Sainte-Maure’s Troie and Eilhart’s Tristrant. These 
examples are of course not to be considered exhaustive, but rather illustra- 
tive of the application of principles taught in the arts of poetry. 

Geoffrey proposed a convenient list of specific means of amplification 
and abbreviation, and his instruction was for this reason widely imitated. 
Geoffrey’s Poetria nova may indeed contain the first systematic treatment of 
the subject, although earlier writers, and especially writers on poetics in the 
twelfth century, advocated expansion and abridgement of the materia or 
parts of the materia whenever they were called for.3® But there seems to have 
been no systematic listing of acceptable ways of doing so before the Poetria 
nova. Faral has shown the resemblance between Geoffrey’s lists and that 
contained in Eberhard the German’s Laborintus.“° Moreover, Brunetto 
Latini incorporated Geoffrey’s instruction directly into his Tresor, as the 
following table shows. 


Geoffrey of Vinsauf Brunetto Latini 
interpretatio or expolitio “aornemens” (p. 330, § 1) 
circuitio or circumlocutio “tourn” (p. 330, § 2) 
collatio aperta and occulta “comparaison descoverte” and 

“coverte” (pp.330-331, §§ 4-6) 
apostrophatio or exclamatio “clamour” (p. 331, § 7) 
prosopopera “fainture” (p. 331, § 8) 
digressto “trespas” (p. 331, § 9) 
descriptio “demoustrance” (pp. 331-332, 
§§ 10-11) 
oppositio or oppositum “adoublement” (p. 332, § 12) 


And Brunetto concludes with a translation of Geoffrey’s final remarks: 


Sic surgit permulta seges de semine pauco: 
Flumina magna trahunt ortus de fonte pusillo; 
(vss. 687-688) 


Or avés oii comment on puet acroistre ses dis, et sa 
matere alongnier, car a poi de semence croist grans 
blés et de petites fontaines naist grans flueves. 


(p. 332, § 13) 


38 Faral, Arts poétiques, 59. 
39 See especially Curtius, Europdische Literatur, 483-484. 
40 Arts poétiques, 62. 


134 D. KELLY 


Brunetto does not attempt to translate Geoffrey’s flowery illustrations of 
each means of amplification. Either he gives no example at all, as in the 
case of prosopopeia — “Et c’est si entendable que li mestres ne s’entremet 
de mostrer aucun example de ce” (Ρ. 330, § 8), — or chooses his own 
briefer and more prosaic examples. Under afostrophatio, for example, he 
abbreviates Geoffrey’s apostrophe to Death (vss. 386-396: p. 331, 8 7, 
lines 42-44) and to Nature (vss. 397-411: lines 44-45). On only one occasion 
does Brunetto translate carefully and at length into prose one of Geoffrey’s 
illustrations; it is the description of the beautiful woman, called Iseut by 
Brunetto but left nameless in Geoffrey: vss. 564-595 [vss. 563 and 595-597 
not included in the Tvesor]: pp. 331-332, § 11, lines 69-88. Brunetto does 
not reproduce Geoffrey’s instruction on abbreviation. He concludes the 
treatment of amplification by alluding to abbreviation, and then refers the 
reader to a later section of his book on rhetoric: “por ce est il drois et raisons 
que li mestres ensegne a abregier son conte quant il est trop grans et trop 
lons; et de ce mousterra il avant la u il dira du fet” (p. 332, § 13). This 
section is on pp. 353-354 (sec. xliii: “De conter le fet briement”), but the 
material in that section is derived entirely from Cicero’s De inventione; there 
is nothing from Geoffrey. This is in fact to be expected; the means of ab- 
breviation listed in the Poetria nova are not particularly appropriate to 
writing in French. 

The success of the Poetria nova made Geoffrey’s treatment of amplification 
and abbreviation authoritative. The evidence from Brunetto Latini, Eber- 
hard the German, and Chaucer supports this conclusion. At the time 
Geoffrey was writing, however, there was, apparently, still some uncertain- 
ty in his mind regarding the precise listing of the means of amplification; 
the list contained in the Documentum does not agree entirely with that found 
in the Poetria nova. And John of Garland’s list resembles that found in the 
Documentum rather than that in the Poetria nova.*4 


“1 In addition to the passages cited above (notes 23 and 36), the following parts of the Tresor are 
based on Geoffrey’s Poetria nova: X, 8§ 1-3 (p. 327): vws. 1851-83; XII, § 2 (p. 330) : vss. 210-217. 

42 The means of abbreviation are: emphasis, articulus, ablative absolute, avoidance of repetition, 
inuendo (intellectio), asyndeton, fusion of a number of statements; see Faral, Arts poétiques, 85. 

*8 As has been shown above, both Brunetto Latini and Chaucer were familiar with Geoffrey’s 
apostrophe to Death upon the death of Richard the Lion Hearted; see Tresor, 331, § 7, lines 42-45; 
Chaucer, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, VII, vss. 3347-49. 

“4 For abbreviation, compare John of Garland, Romanische Forschungen, 13, 913-914, with Geof- 
frey, Documentum, 277-280, §§ 30-43; for amplification, John, 914-916, with Geoffrey, 271-277, 
§§ 2-29. Faral’s table in Aris poétiques, 62, provides a convenient outline of the means of amplifica- 
tion proposed by the different arts of poetry. In spite of some differences, Faral argues: “On remar- 
que... que le dénombrement des procédés concorde dans la plupart de ces textes avec celui qu’in- 
dique la Poetria nova.” 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 135 


The use of amplification and abbreviation by Latin and vernacular 
authors, and the relation of their use of them to the composition of their 
poems, has not been adequately studied. Several scholars have analyzed 
the presentation of the subject found in the arts of poetry and have illustra- 
ted their discussion with examples taken from contemporary Latin and 
vernacular writing.*® And a few have studied the use made of some or all 
of the means of amplification in particular works.“ We lack however 
systematic studies of individual narrative poems showing whether, and if 
so how, the use of amplification and abbreviation is related to the overall 
plan of the work. Geoffrey says that amplification should always be fitting 
and the type used appropriate. Given the widespread use of amplification 
and abbreviation in medieval poetry, this subject should offer fruitful ground 
for a number of independent studies. 


45 Brinkmann, 47-68; Faral, Arts poétiques, 61-85; Curtius, Europdische Literatur, 479-485; Leonid 
Arbusow, ‘Colores rheiorici, 2d ed. (Gottingen, 1963), 21-29. 

46 Paral, Recherches, 307-388; Brinkmann, 103-184; Stanislaw Sawicki, Gotifried von Strassburg 
und die Poetik des Mittelaliers, Germanische Studien, 124 (Berlin, 1932), 71-115; Traugott Naunin, 
Der Einfluss der mittelalterlichen Rhetorik auf Chaucers Dichtung (diss. Bonn, 1929), 24-30, and passim; 
Eugéne Vinaver, in M. Dominica Legge, ed. Le Roman de Balain (Manchester, 1942), xiii-xxiii; 
Everett, Proceedings of the British Academy, 36, 139-148; Manfred Gsteiger, Die Landschaftsschilde- 
rungen in den Romanen Chrestiens de Troyes (Bern, 1958) ; Alice M. Colby, The Portrait in -Twelfth- 
Century French Literature (Geneva, 1965). The only study I know of that examines the use of all 
‘forms of amplification and abbreviation in relation to the structure of the poem is Alan M. F. 
Gunn’s The Mirror of Love: A Reinterpretation of ‘ The Romance of the Rose’ (Lubbock, Texas, 1952). 
All other studies of the subject merely illustrate the methods employed in one particular work, or 
in a number of works, or analyze special examples by themselves; little or no effort is made to 
relate the use of amplification to the plan and intention of the poem, in the way that Gunn does. 
Gunn himself seems to think that, apart from the allegorical poem, the union between plot and 
amplification cannot be successful because of the incoherent matiére the authors use (p.72, note 12). 
Obviously, the usual matiére of vernacular literature — Arthurian or otherwise —- was too varied 
to allow extensive use of amplification such as the far simpler narrative of the Rose permitted; or, 
to take another example, as in Latin narrative poetry like Matthew of Vendéme’s Tobias (Migne, 
PL 205, 933-980), Pyramus and Thisbe (Lehmann, Pseudo-antike, 31-35), and Milo (Cohen, 1, 168- 
177). But the whole problem of the poet’s matiére, his choice and arrangement of it, is far from being 
resolved. It must however be resolved. before statements like Gunn’s can be taken seriously. To 
say that Arthurian romance is not composed like the Rose does not mean no other satisfactory man- 
ner of composition, including the use of amplification, was possible, and that the. Arthurian 
works are therefore badly written. It is clear that amplification is not necessarily limited to one 
genre or form, or that allegorical tales are the only type suitable for its use. Amplification is. used 
elsewhere than in narrative poetry, as, for example, in courtly lytic in France and Germany; see 
Roger Dragonetti, La Technique poétique des trouvéres dans la chanson courtoise (Bruges, 1960), 194-303. 
The theorists applied it to letter-writing and the composition of sermons as well as to narrative 
poetry. 


136 D. KELLY 


ORNAMENTATION 


Geoffrey handles ornamentation under two principal headings: the two 
kinds of ornamentation (ornatus facilis and difficilis) and the three styles. 
The three styles as such are not discussed in the Poetria nova, but Geoffrey 
does take them up in the Documentum (pp. 312-323, §§ 145-151; pp. 315-316, 
δὲ 157-161). Quadlbauer has studied the history of the three styles tho- 
roughly enough to preclude our going into the subject here any more than 
to insist particularly upon the relation between the kind of style and the 
materta of the poem. Geoffrey is typical of his time in considering each of 
Vergil’s main writings as representative of each of the three styles: the 
grand style in the Aeneid, the middle style in the Georgics, and the low style 
in the Bucolics. Geoffrey does not therefore understand the three styles as 
they were understood in antiquity. Rather the nature of the materia, the 
social order to which the persons represented belong and in which the 
events normally transpire determines the classification into grand, middle, 
and low.‘? This does not preclude stylistic differences due to the different 
vocabulary and sentence structure appropriate to narrative concerned with 
different classes of society ;#8 nevertheless, these differences were incidental, 
and the subject matter distinguished in the last analysis one style from the 
other, not the means of embellishment appropriate to each style. Thus the 
variation of styles for the sake of variety, a practice encouraged in Roman 
rhetoric, is forbidden by Geoffrey as adamantly as he would doubtless have 
protested against the mixing of social classes. As a consequence the vitia 
associated with each style in Classical rhetoric could be extended to all 
three styles in Geoffrey’s scheme. An author might be aridum et exsangue or 
turgidum et inflatum whether he wrote of knights and ladies, members of the 
middle class, or peasants. The relevance of this interpretation of the three 
styles to Geoffrey’s conception of narrative composition is obvious. The 


47 See Quadibauer, 90-91, § 44a; 104, § 44p: “Die kiinstlerische Einheit der Komposition, die 
die Ais poetica fordert, deutet Galfrid als Einheit des stylus (materiae) im Sinn von Uniformitat, 
als Einheit also, die keine Variation vertragt, und gewinnt so aus Horaz die autoritative Fundie- 
rung seines Verbots der Variation des stylus. Variare stylum hiesse fiir ihn — die styli sind ja 
sprachlich dargebotene Stofftypen — die Stoffart wechseln, nicht zum Thema Gehiriges ‘bei- 
mischen’.” 

48 Quadlbauer, 94, ὃ 44e; 97, ὃ 44g]; 109, § 44w. Cf. also, on John of Garland, 123, § 46k. 
Erich Auerbach, Literatursprache und Publikum in der lateinischen Spatantike und im Mittelalter (Bern, 
1958),s'dicusses the influence of the Bible, representative of sermo humilis, on the development of the 
material conception of the three styles; see especially 25-53. See also Quadlbauer, 9, § 4; 19-20, 
ὃ 14a-b. 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 137 


materia fixes the type of persons, settings, social context; accordingly, the 
vocabulary, the means of expression chosen must fit the materia. Popular 
sources, for example, that mix the common and the aristocratic would have 
to be corrected in the initial phases of composition in order to prevent a 
mixing of styles. And indeed, in courtly literature, largely concerned with 
members of the aristocracy, the appearance of the lower classes is extremely 
rare, except when their appearance is necessitated by the requirements of 
aristocratic life: servants, messengers, farmers, etc. One striking exception 
in French literature is the herdsman in Chrétien’s Yoain. Yet even this 
personage illustrates the “stylistic” difficulties presented by the introduction 
of such figures. A knight on a quest happens upon the herdsman, and asks 
him if he has heard of any “aventures” or “merveilles”, since such encoun- 
ters are typically what the questing knight is searching for. But the herds- 
man, who belongs to a different class of society, is not accustomed to such 
matiere. The knight asks: 

Or te pri et quier et demant, 

se tu sez, que tu me consoille 

ou d’aventure ou de mervoille. 

— A ce, fet il [the herdsman], faudras 

tu bien: 
d’aventure ne sai je rien, 


n’onques mes n’en oi parler. 
(vss. 964-969). 


The two do not speak the same language, for they come from different 
classes of society. 

Geoffrey’s most important contribution on the subject of style is the 
instruction about the two kinds of ornamentation: ornatus facilis and ornatus 
difficilis. The earliest systematic classification of the two genera is found in 
the Poetria nova, although there is reason to believe that Bernard Silvestris 
preceded Geoffrey in the lost Summa, and that he may even have invented 
the distinction;®° the first indication of such a distinction dates further back, 


49 Ed. Mario Roques (Paris, 1960). A similar interpretation of the language of the aristocracy 
among the lower classes is found in Aucassin et Nicolette, ed. Mario Roques, 2d ed. (Paris, 1954), 
19-20. Of course, the chantefable is not, as a genre, on the same level as a roman such as Yvain, but 
resembles in subject matter the medieval Latin “Comedy”. The “Comedy” required, as Geof- 
frey tells us, the middle or low style: “Res comica namque recusat/Arte laboratos sermones: sola 
requirit/Plana” (Poetria nova, vss. 1885-87). Plana “entspricht... dem mittleren und dem niedrigen 
Stil” (Quadlbauer, 99, §§ 44k), although it is as a term used to describe ornatus facilis more than 
any particular style; see Quadlbauer, 98-99, § 44k. See also the passage from the Aulularia, cited 
above p. 120, where Vitalis of Blois prefers mixing styles to changing his materia. 

50 Eberhard, Laborintus, vss. 595-598; Speculum, 41, 266, note 22; Quadlbauer, 106-109, ὃ 44t-v. 


138 D. KELLY 


however, and, as Quadlbauer has shown, may be found in the scholia to the 
Ad Herennium.*' Since the two kinds of ornamentation also appear in rudi- 
mentary form in the artes dictandi, and since Bernard’s lost treatise was, like 
Geoffrey’s Documentum, in part an ars dictandi, it may well be that Bernard 
was Geoffrey’s source. 

The instruction regarding the use of the two kinds of ornamentation 
reflects that given about disposition and amplification: subordination of the 
choice of tropes and figures to the requirements of the materia. 

Mentis in arcano cum rem digesserit ordo, 
Materiam verbis veniat vestire poesis. 
Quando tamen servire venit, se praeparet aptam 
Obsequio dominae: caveat sibi, ne caput hirtis 
Crinibus, aut corpus pannosa veste, vel illa 
Ultima displiceant, aliunde nec inquinet illam 
Hanc poliens partem: pars si qua sedebit inepte, 
Tota trahet series ex illa parte pudorem: 

Fel modicum totum mel amaricat; unica menda 
Totalem faciem difformat. Cautius ergo 


Consule materiae, ne possit probra vereri. 
(vss. 60-70) 


This injunction is specifically applied to ornamentation later (vss. 73 7-764). 
In the less florid language of the Documentum: “Cogitandum... prius est de 
sententia quam cogitemus de verborum junctura. Mortua sunt enim verba 
si non incolumi nitantur sententia, quae quodam modo anima est verbi. 
Cum constiterit de sententia, procedendum est ad verba, diligentiam adhi- 
bendo, ut series verborum sit ornata” (p. 285, ὃ 2). Geoffrey is even 
more explicit in his brief Summa de coloribus rhetoricis: “Considerandum 
est ita qualiter tractetur materia si de seriis vel de jocis. Si de seriis 
tractetur materia, aut utendum est facili oratione et ornata, aut ora- 
tione gravi...” (p. 321); and, further on: “Notandum est quod ex praedictis 
exornationibus quaedam quibusdam materiis sunt necessariae; materiae 
vero quae tractatur ex ira vel indignatione vel dolore vel amore vel odio vel 
insania, haec sunt necessariae: repetitio, articulus, exclamatio, conduplica- 
tio, dubitatio, subjectio; in gravi vero materia, his utendum est difficultati- 
bus: circuitione, translatione, significatione” (p. 325). Thus the figures and 
tropes appropriate to passion are distinguished from those suitable to weigh- 
ty or more serious discourse. In all of these statements one principal concern 
is evident: the subordination of embellishment to the demands of the materia: 
of the poem. It is also apparent from these statements that an author may 


51 Β, 58, § 27. 
52 Arbusow, p. 18.. 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 139 


vary from one kind of ornamentation to the other, depending upon the 
different parts of his materia. Thus the admonition of Classical rhetoric to 
change from one style to the other finds a counterpart in Geoffrey’s instruc- 
tion regarding the genera of ornamentation.** 

Instruction on the use of tropes and figures is too extensive and varied 
in Geoffrey’s time and thereafter to allow one to attribute too much influence 
to his particular treatment, except of course for the distinction between 
ornatus facilis and ornatus difficilis. Rather Geoffrey is important for carry- 
ing on and giving a convenient presentation to traditional knowledge of 
and instruction about ornamentation. There is no evidence that this 
instruction was followed exclusively by his successors in the schools; Eber- 
hard the German did not repeat his scheme as he did on amplification, nor 
did John of Garland.™ 

The poets of course made extensive use of figures and tropes, and evidence 
for this fact is not lacking.5> The use of ornaius facilis and ornatus difficilis 
has been traced through a few authors, although in no case very thorough- 
ly.56 Gottfried von Strassburg’s celebrated criticism of Wolfram von Eschen- 
bach’s composition is, it has been argued, at least in part a defense of one 
style against another. But the question is still unresolved,*” and seems more 


52 Quadlbauer, 111, ὃ 44y. 

54 See the comparative tables in Faral, Aris poétiques, 52-54. The usual source seems to have been, 
either directly or indirectly, the Ad Herennium; see Faral, 48. Matthew constitutes an exception to 
the rule; see Faral, 48; Speculum, 41, 265-266, and note 21. 

55 See the bibliography in Arbusow, 124-128, and Faral, Arts poétiques, xi, note 1. To these lists 
may be added: Everett, Proceedings of the British Academy, 36, 133-139; Valeria Bertolucci, “Commen- 
to retorico all’ Erec e al Cligés,” Studi mediolatini e volgari, 8 (1960), 9-51; Bertolucci, “La Retorica 
nel Tristano di Thomas,” Studi mediolatini e volgari, 6-7 (1959), 25-61. 

56 Brinkmann, 98-102; Sawicki, pp. 115-149; Quadlbauer, 129 and 150-159. Boesch, 198-205, 
discusses the subject in connection with the important Middle High German poets; his remarks 
are useful, but must be corrected in the light of Quadlbauer’s findings regarding the three styles and 
the two kinds of ornamentation as these were understood in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 
Note, for example, that Walther von der Vogelweide did not use the three styles in the way that 
they are described in the Ad Herennium; see Boesch, 199, and Quadlbauer, 157, ὃ 59. In Matthew 
of Vendéme, a “golden” middle style is recommended in preference to the two extremes of high 
and low; see Quadlbauer, 74-79, §§ 37c-c5. Cf. the passage from Hugh of Trimberg’s Renner cited 
by Brinkmann, 78: “swer tihten wil, der tihte als6/daz weder ze nider noch ze h6/sines sinnes fliige 
daz mittel halten,/sé wirt er wert beide jungen und alten.” Matthew’s preference for the middle 
style is not shared by Geoffrey, who recommends all three; see Quadlbauer, 95-96, § 44f. Auer- 
bach, Literatursprache, 135-176, has argued that vernacular literature uses only the middle style (in 
the Classical sense, i.e. ornatus facilis in the Middle Ages — Auerbach does not take up the distinc- 
tion ornatus facilis and difficilis) before Dante’s time. 

57 Sawicki, 116, 130-131, 168-171; for recent bibliography on this question, see Gottfried Weber, 
Gottfried von Strassburg (Stuttgart, 1962), 15. ; 


140 D. KELLY 


complicated than a disagreement regarding either style or ornamentation, 
as Geoffrey understood the terms. There is in any case no indication any- 
where in the foetriae that one kind of ornamentation was considered intrinsi- 
cally superior to the other. 

It has been a commonplace in studies of the arts of poetry since Faral’s 
edition that, in his words, “la composition n’a pas été le souci dominant des 
écrivains du moyen ἄρα." 58. He accounts for this anomaly in part by the 
lack of instruction on narrative composition in the arts of poetry. “L’en- 
seignement des arts poétiques, qui ne brille pas par l’envergure des con- 
ceptions, parait avoir agi précisément par ce qu’il contenait de plus super- 
ficiel et de plus mécanique.” By the latter words Faral means amplification 
and abbreviation, tropes and figures. But it is now apparent that Faral’s 
statement, in so far as the arts of poetry are concerned, is either incorrect or 
in need of clarification, depending upon the particular poetic treatise under 
consideration. Some of the arts of poetry, in particular Matthew of Ven- 
déme’s Ars versificatoria and Eberhard the German’s Laborintus, are more 
elementary and thus more limited in scope than the other treatises. The 
others, including Geoffrey of Vinsauf and John of Garland, do include, to 
a greater or lesser extent, all the steps in composition as it was understood 
in their time, that is the three steps common in traditional rhetoric: in- 
vention, disposition, ornamentation. Nor did the authors of the treatises 
consider ornamentation the most important task in writing, as Faral be- 
lieved. Rather the invention of the materia is the first and foremost step 
in composition. Invention is of course not treated so extensively in the 
Poetria nova as it was in traditional rhetoric or in the aries dictandi. But this 
may be accounted for by the variety and diversity of materia subject to 
poetic treatment, and the limitless purposes that such materia could be made 
to serve. Here the author was left to grapple with his materia as best he 
could, with the general admonition to give it order, meaning, and clarity.®9 
But the subsequent steps of disposition and ornamentation are controlled 
by the plan and purpose of the materia. Subordination of ornamentation to 
the plan and intention of the author is also demanded by Matthew of 
Vendéme; but Matthew does not include instruction on invention as such, 
since his treatise is designed for beginning students in composition and he 
therefore assumes that they will be working with materia already arranged 
and suitable for embellishment.® Still, Matthew’s presentation illustrates 
the two points I have tried to make in this paper: Geoffrey’s conception of 


58 Arts poétiques, 59-60. For similar opinions, see Speculum, 41, 261, note 2. 
59 Brinkmann, 46-47; Arbusow, 35. 
60 Speculum, 41, 267-268 and 274. 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 141 


composition was widespread among twelfth and thirteenth century writers, 
and his conception demanded that disposition and ornamentation be sub- 
ordinate to and to a large extent determined by the requirements of the sub- 
ject matter and design of the poem. 

These findings constitute of course only a first step towards a reconsidera- 
tion of certain aspects of composition in medieval narrative poetry. But 
they do suggest what needs to be done in future studies of this form of writ- 
ing. Careful analysis of structure, followed by a study of amplification and 
abbreviation and of ornamentation, should permit us better to understand 
and appreciate how the rules of the arts of poetry were applied, and how 
much freedom and originality the individual authors allowed themselves 
in using them. A relatively uncomplicated example from Chrétien’s Cligés 
will serve to illustrate the type of problem one comes across in this sort of 
criticism — a consideration of the problems involved in analyzing the am- 
plification and ornamentation used, say, in the monologues of Alexandre 
and Soredamors in the first part of the poem, which would be too long for 
this paper, would give a better indication of the difficulties and value of 
such investigations. Cligés is generally considered transitional in so far as 
Chrétien’s use of description of persons and events is concerned. The more 
lavish descriptions in Erec give way after Cligés to description that seems, to 
modern taste, either more appropriate or more natural. In Cligés itself, 
Chrétien terminates the description of the marriage of Cligés’ parents, 
Alexandre and Soredamors, so abruptly that the effect is rather displeasing: 


A Guinesores sanz redot 
Furent au los et a Votroi 

Mon seignor Gauvain et le roi 
Le jor faites lor esposailles. 

De la richesce, et des vitailles, 
Et de la joie, et del deduit, 

Ne savroit nus dire, ce cuit, 
Tant qu’as noces plus n’en eiist. 
Por tant qu’as plusors despleiist, 
Ne vuel parole user ne perdre, 
Qu’a mialz dire me vuel aerdre. 


(vss. 2312-22) 


61 [talics represent changes made in conformity with Wendelin Foerster, ed. Cliges (Halle, 1884). 
That Chrétien weighed the advantages and disadvantages of particular descriptions before Cligés 
is apparent in Erec, vss. 5520-35. In Perceval, Chrétien concludes the description of a combat even 
more abruptly: “La bataille fu forz et dure./De plus deviser n’ai je cure;/Que painne gastee me 
sanble” (vss. 3927-29); Alfons Hilka, ed. Der Percevalroman (Halle, 1932). A few manuscripts add 
to the original version at this point; see Der Percevalroman, 457-474 and 790-791. 


142 D. KELLY 


On the other hand, Chrétien insists later on introducing descriptions of 
Cligés and Fénice, although the latter are more stereotyped than a des- 
cription of the wedding celebration need have been, and despite the disap- 
proval that Chrétien clearly sought to circumvent by omitting an elaborate 
description of the wedding. The description of the beautiful Fénice comes 
first, and is, as usual in these cases, hyperbolic (vss. 2677-2705) : 


Bien sai, se m’an antremeisse 
Et tot mon san i anpleasse, 
Que tote ma poinne i gastasse, 
Et ce seroit poinne gastee. 
(vss. 2702-05) 


This consideration did not, however, prevent Chrétien from making a try 
at it! Then he passes immediately to Cligés: 

Por la biauté Clygés retreire 

Vuel une description feire, 


Don molt sera bries li passages. 
(vss. 2721-23) 


The passage takes up some twenty-five lines (vss. 2724-52). Chrétien is 
not the only important medieval writer to present us with such an anomaly. 
Gottfried von Strassburg refrains from describing the Morholt before the 
battle with Tristan, but does immediately thereafter draw for us a picture 
of Tristan that is longer than even the average medieval description of per- 
sons. For the Morholt there is but one line of true description (vs. 6501), 
whereas Tristan’s takes up 187 lines (vss. 6534-6720) ! Gottfried does take 
care to justify what he has done, and his words are revealing in the light of 
Geoffrey of Vinsaut’s admonition that all amplification be appropriate. To 
describe the Morholt is unnecessary, since his courage, size, and strength 
are well known. 


hie si des lobes von ime genuoc. 
ich weiz wol, daz er kunde 
do unde zaller stunde 
ze kampfe und ouch ze vehte 
nach ritteres rehte 
sinem libe vil wol mite gan. 
et hztes e so vil getan. 
(vss. 6514-20) 


But Tristan is as yet untried in earnest combat, and the odds are against 
him — Gottfried calls him “Der unversuohte Tristan ze notlichen dingen” 
(vss. 6534-35). Therefore, to make his coming victory over the Morholt 
more plausible, Gottfried elaborates upon his appearance, and the elabo- 
ration stresses Tristan’s courage and strength— qualities that will stand him 
in good stead when he must do battle with his terrible opponent. Thus, 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 143 


Gotfried, as if carried away by his enthusiasm, is unable to prevent himself 
from waxing eloquent about the young knight. 

hi! do er den [armor] an sich genam, 

wie lustic und wie lobesam 

er do dar inne were, 

daz were sagebzre ! 

wan daz aber ichz niht lengen wil; 

der rede der wiirde alze vil, 

ob ich ez allez wolte 

ergriinden, alse ich solte. 

und sult ir doch wol wizzen daz.... 

(vss. 6561-69) 


And Gottfried goes on with the description for almost 150 lines more ! 
With somewhat more finesse, Gottfried is accomplishing the same thing as 
Chrétien in Cligés. And both are applying the rule found in all the arts of 
poetry regarding appropriate description: “Vitium istud plerique frequen- 
ter incurrunt cum degrediuntur ad hanc vel ad illam rem describendam, in 
qua describenda sunt prompta et usitata, cum tamen ipsa descriptio parum 
vel nihil hic operetur ad materiam” (pp. 314-315, § 156; cf. Poetria nova, 
vss. 622-623). Clearly Chrétien did not avoid such description merely 
because it was becoming tedious to his audiences, although this fact doubt- 
less influenced his thinking on the subject; otherwise he would not have 
continued to use lengthy stereotyped description later in Cligés, or, for that 
matter, in later poems such as Yvain and Perceval.” Neither whimsy nor 
submission to the will of a fickle audience is at work here. And yet a simple 
reference to the instruction contained in the arts of poetry is not enough to 
resolve the problem. Rather a careful study of the relation of the descrip- 
tive amplification, or its omission, to the structure of each poem is the only 
way to appreciate each poet’s intentions in the passages we have considered. 
And the procedure obviously applies to all instances of amplification and 
abbreviation and of ornamentation that appear in narrative poetry of 
Chrétien’s and Gottfried’s time. 


CONCLUSION 


To conclude, let us consider briefly two problems involving Chaucer’s 
relation to Geoffrey of Vinsauf. First, Professor James J. Murphy has 


82 See Yuain, vss. 1465-1510, where the stereotyped order is masked by a wealth of diverse details; 
Der Percevalroman, vss. 1795-1829. Miss Colby, in her study of portrait description in Chrétien and 
other twelfth century poems, has shown how the authors varied basic patterns of description from 
one work to the other. The same is true in Chaucer; see Naunin, 28-30. 


144 D. KELLY 


argued in several recent articles®* that there is little evidence that Chaucer 
either knew or was influenced by the Poetria nova. The allusion to the com- 
plaint over the death of Richard the Lion-Hearted in The Nun’s Priest’s 
Tale can, he points out, be traced to a reproduction of the passage in Trivet’s 
Annales. And Chaucer’s use of the figures and tropes can be accounted 
for by his study of grammarians such as Alexander of Villedieu and Eber- 
hard of Béthune, French poems, and Chaucer’s own poetic imagination. 
Finally, there was no “rhetorical tradition” in fourteenth century England, 
nor any description of rhetoric in French authors Chaucer was familiar 
with, that would indicate he was acquainted with the traditional subject 
matter of rhetoric or of rhetorical poetics.® 

If, in fact, there was no “tradition” of rhetoric in England in Chaucer’s 
time, there were certainly ancient and medieval treatises on rhetoric and 
poetics in contemporary libraries, as anyone who examines the catalogues 
of thirteenth and fourteenth century British libraries will realize. The 


63 Murphy, “John Gower’s Confessio Amantis and the First Discussion of Rhetoric in the English 
Language,” Philological Quarterly, 41 (1962), 401-411; “Rhetoric in F ourteenth-Century Oxford,” 
Medium Zivum, 34 (1965), 1-20; and, most important, The Review of English Studies, n. s. 15, 1-20. 
For a general outline of the scope of rhetoric in the High and Late Middle Ages, see Murphy, “The 
Arts of Discourse, 1050-1400,” Mediaeval Studies, 23 (1961), 194-205. 

84 F. Nicholai Triveti De ordine frat. predicatorum Annales, ed. Thomas Hog (London, 1845), 
161-163; see Murphy, RES, 15, 13-14. As Murphy points out, this passage was frequently copied 
by itself; see Faral, Arts poétiques, 19. 

85 Murphy supports this assertion by descriptions of rhetoric found in Froissart and Guillaume 
de Machaut, cited from R. B. Daniels, Figures of Rhetoric in Fohn Gower’s English Works (diss. Yale, 
1934), 13-14. The evidence is misleading for two reasons. First, the two passages, taken out of 
context, do not give all of what either Froissart or Machaut meant to say on composition. Machaut 
is speaking not only of lyric verse forms, but also of ornamentation and thematic elaboration in 
brief poems: “Rhetorique versefier / Fait ’amant et metrefier, / Et si fait faire jolis vers, /Noviaus 
et de metre divers, /.../Et li aourne son langage/Par maniere plaisant et sage, /Car Scens yest qui 
tout gouverne / En chambre, en sale et en taverne./ Dous Penser et bonne Esperence / Li font avoir 
douce Plaisence/Et li amenistrent matiere.” (vss. 258-261, 268-274, in Guillaume de Machaut, 
Poésies lyriques, ed. V. Chichmaref, 2 vols. (Paris, [s.d.]), 1, 12). In the case of Froissart, the poet 
is receiving instruction limited to set, short forms such as those described in the passage cited by 
Murphy; however, Froissart goes on to discuss the arrangement of the short poems in the entire 
book, that is he discusses their disposition; see vss. 734-776, in Guvres de Froissart, ed. M. A. Scheler, 
4 vols. (Brussels, 1872), 3, 75-76. The second point that must be made to understand these pas- 
sages is that “Rhetorique” as Machaut uses it above is not quite the same thing as traditional rheto- 
ric, and the French poets, and presumably Chaucer, were aware of this fact. What both Froissart 
and Machaut mean by “Rhetorique” is vernacular versification, or what came to be called, among 
other things, the Second Rhetoric; this was distinguished from the First Rhetoric, or poetria, as 
illustrated by the Poeiria nova itself. Sec E. Langlois, Recueil d’arts de Seconde Rhétorique (Paris, 1902 5 
ix. Murphy seems to be aware of this distinction, but fails to note that the First Rhetoric comple- 
mented and preceded the Second. 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 145 


Poetria nova itself was often found in those libraries,** and thus it must have 
been known by those who were interested in literature and writing, as 
Chaucer was. ‘Trivet himself attests to Geoffrey’s fame: “Eo tempore 
magister Galfridus de Vinosalvo, qui ad papam Innocentium librum de 
arte Eloquentiae scripsit, clarus habetur.”°’ As to the internal evidence for 
Chaucer’s acquaintance with the Poetria nova, it is important to note that 


66 The following partial list will suffice to demonstrate this point: Glastonbury (1247-48), in 
T. ὟΝ. Williams, Somerset Mediaeval Libraries (Bristol, 1897), 78; probably England (early 13th cen- 
tury), in J. Young and P. H. Aitken, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of the Hunterian 
Museum in the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1908), 417-419, and E. Faral, Studi medievali, 9, 24, 26, 
38; Reading (14th century), in Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis, ed. W. D. Macray, Rolls Series, 83 
(London, 1886), 364 and perhaps 365; York (1372), in M. R. James, “The Catalogue of the Libra- 
ry of the Augustinian Friars at York,” in Fasciculus Joanni Willis Clark dicatus (Cambridge, 1909), 
72; Dover (1389), in M. R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903), 
487; Durham (1391), B. Botfield, Catalogues of the Library of Durham Cathedral, The Publications of 
the Surtees Society, 7 (London, 1838), 11; Peterborough (late 14th century), in M. R. James, 
Lists of Manuscripts Formerly in Peterborough Abbey Library, The Bibliographical Society’s Transactions, 
Supplement 5 (Oxford, 1926), pp. 46 and 53; from an English MS (late 14th century), in British 
Museum : Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in The Old Royal and King’s Collections, eds. G. F. Warner 
and J. P. Gilson (London, 1921), 1, 236. Works on both grammar and rhetoric, as well as poetics 
(especially Matthew of Vendéme’s and John of Garland’s writings) are also found in these and 
similar catalogues, as are other writings of Geoffrey of Vinsauf. As early as 1202, for example, 
some versus by Geoffrey are catalogued at Rochester; see W. B. Rye, “Catalogue of the Library of 
the Priory of St. Andrew, Rochester, A. D. 1202,” Archaeologia Cantiana, 3 (1860), 57. Two wills 
granting books to the Almonry Library in London, which Chaucer may have used, do not, unfor- 
tunately, mention the Poetria nova, and there is no extant catalogue of the school library from the 
14th century, nor of the St. Paul’s library, which Almonry pupils sometimes used; see E. Rickert, 
“Chaucer at School,” Modern Philology, 29, (1931-32), 257-274, and A. F. Leach, “St. Paul’s School 
before Colet,” Archacologia, 62 (1910), 220-222. But it is significant that one will contained a 
“veterem poetriam” (Modern Philology, 29, 265), which suggests an awareness of the existence of a 
Nova Poetria; it would not be unreasonable, in the light of evidence from other British libraries, to 
suppose that Geoffrey’s treatise was also at St. Paul’s or the Almonry. We know that boys were 
sent there to learn towrite in prose and verse; see Modern Philology, 29, 272; and, for the 12th century, 
Archaeologia, 52, 212-213. Furthermore, two books in one will may have been by Geoffrey: a 
magnus liber equivocorum and a. liber sinonomeorum [sic] (see Modern Philology, 29, 267, note 5; 268, 
note 7); on this cf. as well Faral, Arts poétiques, 6 and 22. M. Manitius ascribes these works to Mat- 
thew of Vendéme, without discussing Faral’s reservations regarding his authorship, and without 
mentioning the various attributions found in the catalogues (3, 746-747). For example, the York 
catalogue of 1372 mentions an encheridion synomorum Galteri and an Encherideon by Geoffrey, followed 
by a liber equivocorum; see James, in Fasciculus Clark, 72 and 67 respectively. It is clear, therefore, 
that Geoffrey’s Poetria nova was found in medieval British libraries in the 13th and 14th centuries, 
and that Chaucer would have had no difficulty in obtaining access to it, ifhe did not have his own 
copy. 

87 Ῥ᾽ 175 (italics mine); cf. also the variants: “in grammatica clarus; ...illustris habetur.” If 
Trivet presents Geoffrey and his treatise “as ifhe did not expect his English audience to be familiar 
with him” (RES, 15, 14, note 4), why did he call Geoffrey clarus ? 


146 D. KELLY 


the textbooks on grammar do not suffice to explain his use of amplification. 
Amplification is partly a problem of disposition, as I have shown above, 
yet none of the means of amplification are discussed in connection with 
either invention or disposition in the grammars. It is Geoffrey’s Poetria 
that contains the earliest known systematic list of the means of amplification, 
and it is from that instruction that Chaucer’s allusion to him derives.*® 
Furthermore, Chaucer shows additional direct knowledge of Geoffrey’s 
instruction in the translation of the first lines of the Poetria nova that is 
found in Troilus: 


For everi wight that hath an hous to founde 
Ne renneth naught the werk for to bygynne 
With rakel hond, but he wol bide a stounde, 
And sende his hertes line out fro withinne 
Aldirfirst his purpos for to wynne. 
Al this Pandare in his herte thoughte, 
And caste his werk ful wisely or he wroughte. 
(I, 1065-71)69 


This passage and the other evidence I have cited do show that Geoffrey 
of Vinsauf was known and admired in Chaucer’s time, and make it quite 
certain that Chaucer himself knew the Poetria nova first hand, and that, at 
the time he composed Troilus and The Canterbury Tales, he had access, 
perhaps in his own library, to that treatise. 

The second problem that requires consideration is Chaucer’s alleged 
criticism of Geoffrey’s Poetria nova. Despite the obvious application in Chau- 


68 Naunin divided the means of amplification into those related essentially to disposition (digres- 
sio and descriptio) and those that also belong to the figures and tropes; see especially 15-16. She 
makes the well-taken point regarding the reference to Geoffrey in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale: “Er 
[Chaucer] spielt... mit einer kurzen Bemerkung auf die Nova Poetria des Gaufred an und kann vor- 
aussetzen, dass jeder gleich weiss, was er damit meinte” (p. 49). I have no argument with Mur- 
phy’s contention that Chaucer did not need the manuals of poetry to learn of the figures taught in 
medieval grammar and illustrated in his French, Latin, and Italian sources. However, the instruc- 
tion regarding the suitability of particular figures is not in the grammars, nor in any other source than 
the rhetorics and the poetriae. — There are a couple of inaccuracies in Murphy’s discussion of the 
figures. Geoffrey may not use the expression colores rhetorici (RES, 15, 9), but he does refer to the 
colores (6. g., vss. 1097, 1220, 1587), and he does write “Rhetoricae flores” (vs. 1226); and, it is not 
true that Matthew of Vendéme omits all the schemata and tropi (RES, 15, 9, note 2); see Faral, Aris 
poétiques, 107-108. 

69 See note 14 above; also Marie P. Hamilton, “Notes on Chaucer and the Rhetoricians,” 
PMLA, 47 (1932), 407; Atkins, 157-159; Robert O. Payne, The Key of Remembrance (New Haven, 
London, 1963), passim, with bibliography, 233-240. The citation of the first line and a half in the 
Poetria nova in de Briggis, cited by Murphy in Medium Zoum, 34, 16; RES, 15, 15, could not there- 
fore account for Chaucer’s entire stanza. And it is simply not true that Chaucer’s passage may 
be traced to Luke xiv. 28-30 or to Boece, IV, prosa, 6 lines 90-96, as easily as to the Poetria nova, vss. 
43-48. The ideas was commonplace, but that Chaucer was translating Geoffrey is unmistakable. 


THEORY OF COMPOSITION IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE POETRY 147 


cer’s writings of the instruction contained in the medieval poetriae like 
Geoffrey’s, the parody in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale has seemed sufficient 
evidence that Chaucer disapproved of their use, and that he is in that poem 
throwing off the shackles and criticizing openly the unreal constraints 
imposed upon writers by the schools. Spearing seeks to bring this out by 
contrasting Chaucer’s parody with the praise of Geoffrey made by a medi- 
ocre Middle English writer, and a near contemporary of Chaucer, Osbern 
Bokenham.”° Yet parody does not in itself necessarily imply a condemnation 
of the form being parodied. Mock heroic poetry — this is the term used 
by Manly to describe The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”! — is not written to ridicule 
epic poetry as such, but rather represents the turning of epic form and typi- 
cal epic conventions and devices, usually by some sort of exaggeration, to 
comic purposes. The grandiose thus becomes the ridiculous. In Chaucer’s 
tale, which is clearly a parody of epic conventions, the appeal to Geoffrey 
is simply an example of this technique. The perversion of epic apostrophe 
for comic purposes does not prevent Chaucer from using the device serious- 
ly, and others like it, elsewhere. Chaucer is in fact doing no more than 
following Geoffrey’s advice and example in the treatment of comic subjects. 
In the Poetria nova, Geoffrey explains how apostrophe may be used for 
comic effects in satire (vss. 431-454), and in the Documentum he even takes 
a passage from Vergil to illustrate praecisio as a comic device (p. 318, ὃ 169). 
Yet there is no more evidence in his words that Geoffrey is mocking 
Vergil than there is in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale that Chaucer is mocking 
Geoffrey. Lehmann’s description of the role of parody in a great deal of 
medieval writing will serve to place Chaucer’s parody in the proper per- 
spective. “Die formale Nachahmung und die Absicht des komischen Effek- 
tes sind da und liegen zutage. Ihr Vorhandensein ist das Wichtigste. Ver- 
spottung, Beschmutzung des zugrunde gelegten Textes ist gar nicht das 
hauptsachliche, ist meist gar kein Ziel unserer Parodien. Der mittelalter- 
liche Mensch konnte etwas profanieren und sich damit amiisieren, ohne 
es zu persiflieren. Die Parodisten spielen mehr leichtfertig als schandlich 
mit Hohem und Heiligem.”” This does not mean that Chaucer does not 


70 Spearing, 47-48 and 55. Bokenham himself accounts for his inferior writing by his lack of 
training in the rules taught by the Poetria nova; see the Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed. M. S. Ser- 
jeantson, EETS 206 (London, 1938), vss. 83-98 and 407-420. In the latter passage, he distinguishes 
himself in this respect from “the fresh rethoryens” Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate; he could not 
mean the Second Rhetoric, for he is speaking of amplification by description. See also vss. 1401- 
1406 in the Legendys. 

71 Proceedings of the British Academy, 12, 95. 

72 Parodie, 4. The abundant illustrations given by Lehmann in this study corroborate the genera- 
lization. It is significant in this context that the schools and their instruction were seldom parodied 
or satirized (22). 


148 . D. KELLY 


constitute an exception to the rule. However, the obvious dependence of 
his writing on the instruction of the schools regarding composition, the 
lack of any conclusive evidence in The Canterbury Tales or elsewhere that 
Chaucer despised the theory of composition taught by men like Geoffrey, 
makes his presumed opposition to the traditional conception of composition 
very unlikely, when that contention is built upon the sole evidence of these 
few lines in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. 

Classical rhetoric taught that mastery and performance depend upon 
ingenium, ars, and exercitatio. That mediocre or slavish authors like Boken- 
ham satisfied the last two prerequisites may be apparent, but the first is 
obviously Jacking. But Chaucer and Dante, Gottfried von Strassburg and 
Chrétien de Troyes, clearly possessed all three. The manner in which they 
applied the precepts of the foetriae to the conception and elaboration of 
their narrative poems, the way in which the restraints were mastered and 
then made to serve the individual author’s purposes, may however be 
understood and appreciated only by a return to their works and a study of 
the composition of those works in the light of the instruction contained in 
treatises like Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poeiria nova. In this way it should be 
possible to assess the treatises’ influence on medieval narrative poetry, and 
judge once and for all whether they were a hindrance or a support to the 
poet. The weaknesses or limitations of Geoffrey and his peers need not 
blind us’* to their usefulness as guides towards an understanding of com- 
position in medieval writing. Bad writing is always with us, even though 
good and bad writing may proceed from common principles of composition. 
Genius, not freedom from restraint, makes the difference. 


The University of Wisconsin. 


73 However, Brinkmann for one considers Matthew of Vendéme “ein Fiihrer von feinem Ge- 
schmack und hoher Selbstandigkeit” (54) and Geoffrey “zweifellos ein Mann von feinem Ge- 
schmack” (79). Professor Everett recognized the distinction between “a slavish imitation of the 
devices which the rhetoricians [like Geoffrey] describe, and the adaptation of these devices, or 
others like them, to individual ends” (Proceedings of the British Academy, 36, 139). She did not notice, 
however, that Geoffrey of Vinsauf was aware of the same distinction (Proceedings, 144). The best 
description of medieval poetics is still found in Atkin’s English Literary Criticism; for Chaucer in 
particular, see also the commentary of G. L. Kittredge, Chaucer and his Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 
1915), especially 11-26 and Alain Renoir, “Tradition and Moral Realism: Chaucer’s Conception 
of the Poet,” Studia Neophilogica, 35 (1963), 199-210. 


Imagery in the Knight’s Tale and 
the Miller's Tale’ 


CHRISTOPHER DEAN 


A critics agree that Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the major poets of the 

English language. Critics also agree that imagery and metaphoric 
comparison are central to most, if not all, poetic expression. In view 
of this, it is surprising that so little has been written directly on 
Chaucer’s imagery. What there is, is either very specialized and 
restricted, or treats the imagery incidentally while dealing essentially with 
other matters. 

From the earliest days of Chaucer criticism, commentators have attempt- 
ed to trace Chaucer’s sources and allusions and may, therefore, have told 
us in passing that an image here and there is translated directly from a 
source, is adapted from it or seems to be original. But this kind of commen- 
tary on Chaucer’s imagery is only incidental. Other commentators, ex- 
plaining Chaucer’s language, have sometimes explained the reference of 
a simile or metaphor. But again this is only incidental commentary on 
imagery. General discussions on Chaucer’s style usually say something 
about Chaucer’s imagery but never in any detail.2 The other discussions 
of Chaucer’s style are specialized and though they may treat the imagery 
that comes within their scope in some detail, the treatment is restricted 
by their choice of subject. A frequently adopted approach to studying 
Chaucer’s style is to consider its relationship to the medieval theories of 
rhetoric, particularly the poetic manuals of Geoffrey of Vinsauf and the 
like, but these studies deal with imagery as only one aspect of style and 
not a very central one at that. 


1 An earlier version of this paper was read to the Association of Canadian University Teachers 
of English at their annual meeting in Ottawa in June, 1967. 

2 ELS. Bennett’s comment in Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1947), 78 is an example. 
He says: “Chaucer liked his pictures with clear edges... His images are curiously simple and direct. 
They are for the most part introduced with nothing more than a ‘like to’, or ‘as’, and cover all 
phases of human activity, and make their effect by their homely and immediate appeal.” 

3 Claus Schaar, The Golden Mirror: Studies in Chaucer’s Descriptive Technique and its Literary Back- 
ground (Lund, 1955), for example, talks about Chaucer’s use of traditional imagery but only in 
connection with the subjects of emotions, portraits and landscapes. 


150 CHR. DEAN 


There have, of course, always been perceptive commentaries on indivi- 
dual images.* There are also some useful discussions of groups of images,*® 
including the larger groups of images which have been recently discussed 
in attempts to relate the bible and medieval theories of exegetical reading 
to the work of Chaucer. What is significantly lacking, however, is a major 
study that centres directly on Chaucer’s imagery as a principal subject 
in its own right.® 

There are at least three reasons why little has been said about Chaucer’s 
imagery. The first springs from a certain practical problem that is well 
described by A. C. Spearing : 


Close reading of the kind we have been discussing clearly depends for its 
success on a delicate response to fine shades of meaning and tone. We may find 
that such a response comes naturally to us in reading the writers of our own age, 
because their language is ours; and we even find that it is possible, though 
hardly easy, with literature going as far back as the age of Shakespeare. But 
to achieve such a response towards literature even older than that seems almost 
impossibly difficult, simply because of the language problem. The great period 
of medieval English literature — the fourteenth century — lies too far back in 
the past for us to be able to catch more than the dictionary definitions of most 
words; and there are still some of which we do not know even the dictionary 
definitions.” 


Anyone who deals with Chaucer’s imagery will come up against this 
problem and decisions as to the imagery value of certain lines will often 
perhaps appear to be rather arbitrary. 


Three lines from the Knight’s Tale will illustrate the problem : 
a) Whan she hadde swowned with a deedly cheere (913)8 

b) The sesoun priketh every gentil herte (1043) 

c) This Palamon gan knytte his browes tweye (1128). 


4 See for example the discussion of the opening Spring image of the Canterbury Tales by R. Bald- 
win in The Unity of the Canterbury Tales (Copenhagen, 1955), 19-28. 

5 See, for example, B. Rowland, “Chaucer and the Unnatural History of Animals,” Med. St., 
25 (1963), 367-372, and her other studies of animal images. 

§ Discussions of specific tales often include commentary on the imagery. Thus P. A. Olson, 
“Poetic Justice in the Miller’s Tale,” MLQ, 24 (1963), 230, speaking of the Miller’s Tale, says 
“the imagery of the tale [defines] rather more precisely... the norms according to which the charac- 
ters are punished.” C. A. Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 
1957) talks about the “pragmatic, prosaically solid imagery of fabliau” (224) and “a mass 
recurrence of images” (225). 

7 Criticism and Medieval Poetry (London, 1964), 6. See also E. T. Donaldson, “Idiom of Popular 
Poetry in the Miller’s Tale,” Eng. Inst. Essays (1950), 116-117. 

8 All Chaucerian quotations are from The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2nd ed. 
(Cambridge, Mass., 1957). 


IMAGERY IN THE «KNIGHT'S TALE» AND THE « MILLER’S TALE’ » 151 


In the first example, deedly comes from OE déadlic “subject to death, 
mortal.” It is defined by the OED, sense 7 as “pale in colour like a corpse.”® 
The first quotation illustrating this meaning is from The Legend of Good 
Woman. The MED gives this line from the Knight’s Tale as its first example 
of deadly cheer*® A comparison between the colour of a fainting woman’s 
face and that of a corpse is obviously present. Was it a fresh comparison 
for Chaucer as the dictionaries seem to suggest ? Was it a cliché by his 
time? Had it become so commonplace that, like today, all its imagery 
value had disappeared ? In the second example, priketh comes from LOE 
prician “to pierce or indent with a sharp point” and sense 10 (labelled 
fig) is “to drive or urge as with a spur : to impel, to instigate, incite, sti- 
mulate, provoke.” The first quotations are again from Chaucer. In the 
last example, knytte comes from @ cnyttan “to tie in or with a knot.” The 
OED’s sense 4 is “to draw closely together ; to contract in folds or wrinkles.” 
This line from the Knight’s Tale is the first illustration of the sense. In 
these lines we face the problem that Spearing describes. I have assumed 
that each of these expressions had metaphorical value in the fourteenth 
century, were perhaps even original metaphors, but there can of course 
be no certainty. 

A second reason for not writing of the imagery of medieval verse is 
that the poetic effects are claimed to be spread diffusely throughout long 
passages. This diffuseness is explained by reference to the medieval habit 
of oral delivery and the fact that the audience supposedly took in the poem 
cumulatively line by line. Spearing says : 

If an audience of listeners is to be able to respond to a poem on a single 
reading of it, not only must its expressive devices be largely simple, they must 
also contain a high proportion of the familiar. In such circumstances a poet 
cannot afford to be too novel, too original, too individual in style: he must keep 


largely within a stylistic convention which his audience will understand and 
accept without consideration.” 


Surprisingly, it does not occur to Spearing that Shakespeare, with whom 
he explicitly contrasts Chaucer, also wrote for oral delivery to a largely 
illiterate audience and that he apparently felt no such restrictions on his 
style of writing. 

A third reason for imagery not attracting the attention in medieval 


® The Oxford English Dictionary, ed. J. A. H. Murray εἰ al, (Oxford, 1933), s.v. DEADLY a. 
10 Middle English Dictionary, ed. S. M. Kuhn (Ann Arbor, 1954-), s.v. DEDLt 4(b). 

1. QED, s.v. Prick v. Earlier examples are cited under Prickine vbl. sb. 

12 Spearing, 16ff., Bennett, 83. 

13 Spearing, 20. 


152 CHR. DEAN 


literature that it does in modern is that its role in medieval poetry was very 
different from that of later times. There was no suggestion in the middle 
ages that, as C. Day Lewis puts it, “imagery is at the core of a poem, that 
a poem may itself be an image composed from a multiplicity of images, "14 
It would be wrong to swing to the other extreme and think of medieval 
imagery as purely decorative but this extreme is nearer the truth than 
that of imagery being the poem’s core. This is what the poetic manuals 
taught and to some extent at least what medieval poets practised. Imagery 
in the middle ages is generally more of stylistic concern than thematic. 

I have found only one general treatment of Chaucer’s imagery, R. K. 
Gordon’s “Chaucer’s Imagery.”1° Gordon believes that : “A poet’s choice 
of images throws light on the range of his experience and observation. It 
tells us something of his tastes and preferences, and something also, perhaps, 
of the life of his time.”° His article lists some 77 images, arranged according 
to the subject with which a comparison is made. Some subjects are well 
represented, others hardly at all. There is, he claims, little war imagery, 
few references to the sea, though Chaucer crossed it many times, few images 
relating to the Thames, though he worked by it, and little concern with 
the Customs House.!? Gordon concludes that: “though Chaucer was a 
Londoner, a busy civil servant, and a court poet, the best of his images 
come from the country, from fields.’ 

The value of Gordon’s study is limited, directed as it is at the poet and 
his times rather than at the poems as works of art. This present paper 
takes the opposite approach, attempting to see how much an investigation 
that places imagery at its centre can tell us about the works in which the 
imagery is found.19 

A basic premise of this study is that no examination is valid if it picks 
and chooses amongst the images to be discussed for however well the choice 
may be defended, the charge of arbitrary selection can always be brought 
against it. Every image in the two poems, therefore, has been considered. 
In order to give this study practical limits it has been confined to two 


14 The Poetic Image (London, 1947), 18. 

15 Trans Royal Soc. of Canada, 33, ser. 3, sec. 2, 81-90. Beryl Rowland’s chapter “Chaucer’s 
Imagery” in Companion to Chaucer Studies (Toronto, 1968) arrived too late for consideration in this 
paper. 

16 Gordon, 81. 

1? Gordon, 81-92. 

18 Gordon, 84. 

19 A recent article by J. Richardson, “The Facade of Bawdry: Image Patterns in Chaucer’s 
Shipman’s Tale,” ELH, 32 (1965), 303-313, deals with the imagery of a tale somewhat in the manner 
that I propose, but it does not deal with every image in the tale, only a selected group. 


IMAGERY IN THE « KNIGHT'S TALE» AND THE  MILLER’S TALE’ » 153 


tales — the Knight’s Tale and the Aviller’s Tale. It is generally accepted 
that these tales are a deliberately contrasted pair both in theme and style?° 
— the one courtly, chivalrous and in the high style, the other colloquial, 
scurrilous and in the low style. A study of them together should, therefore, 
show more variation of style and treatment than any other pair of Chaucer’s 
poems. 

Before beginning such a study we must face one more obstacle, namely 
what we understand by the word imagery. Miss Spurgeon is probably 
right when she says that « few people would entirely agree as to what con- 
stitutes an image, and still fewer as to what constitutes a poetic image,”?? 
but her understanding of the term is satisfactory for this study. Ifa formal 
definition is required that by H. W. Wells will serve: “Metaphor is the 
recognition of a suggestion of one concept by another dissimilar in kind 
but alike in some strong ungeneric characteristic.”** I have taken com- 
parison, stated or implied, between two different things as the essential 
element that must be present to constitute an image. All other figurative 
devices, including personification, allusion, symbolism and visual detail, 
whether literally possible or exaggeratedly impossible such as Palamon and 
Arcite fighting ankle-deep in their own blood, have not been counted as 
images. 

Two main questions have been considered in this paper. First, how 
wide is Chaucer’s range of reference and what kind of object does he use as 
vehicles in his comparisons ? Second, is there anything distinctive in the 
way that Chaucer uses his imagery, and has it more than a stylistic value ? 

Chaucer is not a poet who uses imagery profusely. Indeed long stretches 
of verse stand virtually devoid of all images. The opening 54 lines of the 
Knight’s Tale, for example, contain only one image. Later in the poem, 
from the beginning of the quarrel of the gods after the prayers of Emily, 
Arcite and Palamon at 1.2438 until the beginning of the tournament, some 
170 lines further on, there are but two images. In the same way, the Muller’s 
Tale has passages which are almost devoid of imagery. Nicholas and Ali- 
soun begin planning to deceive John at 1.3397. After 309 lines, at the 
point where Absolon sings at Alisoun’s window, we have encountered 
only eight images. 

The imagery in these two tales tends to appear in clusters. In the Knighi’s 


20 See W. Frost, “An Interpretation of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale,” RES, 25 (1949), 303-304; 
W. CG. Stokoe, “Structure and Intention in the First Fragment of The Canterbury Tales,” UTQ, 21 
(1952), 120-127; C. A. Owen, “Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: Aesthetic Design in Stories of the First 
Day,” ES, 35 (1954), 51-56; T. W. Craik, The Comic Tales of Chaucer (London, 1964), 1. 

21 The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), 8. 

22 Poetic Imagery: Illustrated from Elizabethan Literature (New York, 1961), 21. 


154 CHR. DEAN 


Tale, five passages — the description of Emily at her first appearance, the 
description of Lygurge and Emetrius, Arcite’s complaint in the woods that 
is overheard by Palamon, the fight in the woods and the tournament — 
account for 35 images or more than a quarter of the total and yet the pas- 
sages add up to only 227 lines or about one tenth of the whole poem. Simi- 
larly in the Miller’s Tale, two passages — the description of Alisoun and 
Absolon’s first speech at Alisoun’s window — account for 25 images, nearly 
half of the total in the poem. But the two passages are only 48 lines long in 
a poem that totals 668 lines. It is clear that Chaucer’s usual style is to 
use few images. It takes a special occasion for him to turn heavily to their 
use and as a result when he does, certain passages stand out strikingly from 
their surrounding contexts. 

Chaucer’s purpose in using imagery varies in the two tales. I have 
classified his images in these tales according to their function, using the 
five-point system of the table that follows. 


Purpose of the image Knight’s Tale Miller’s Tale 
Number of Approx Number of Approx 
images percent images percent 
of total of total 
1 External condition 
of people 
(a) appearance 22 18 19 
(b) action 7 6 8 13 
(c) visible emotion 10 8 -- — 
(d) physical condition 1 1 l 2 
2 Internal condition 
of people 
(a) character 3 2 3 5 
(b) emotions felt 25 20 5 8 
(c) relationship to others 6 4 8 13 
3 Description of things 13 11 12 20 
4 Description of animals, birds 4 3 - - 
5 Expression of general abstract 
ideas in concrete terms _3l 25 5 a8 
122 “98 “ΘΙ 100 


It is clear that in the Miller’s Tale, the main function of the imagery is to 
describe people from the outside, then the physical world in which they 
live. Its secondary concerns are to describe what people do and how they 
feel toward other people.?* The way the imagery is used clearly categorizes 


23 A somewhat similar conclusion was reached by Schaar, 63-64. 


IMAGERY IN THE « KNIGHT’S TALE» AND THE « MILLER’S TALE’ » 155 


the tale as one of externals, of action and physical reality. On the contrary 
the imagery of the Knight’s Tale deals primarily with abstract ideas and 
people’s emotions. Only secondarily does it turn to people’s appearances 
and their actions. This usage substantiates our impression from other 
sources that the Knight’s Tale is a contemplative, leisurely and philosophical 
poem. 

Our next topic is the kind of object that Chaucer uses as points of com- 
parison in his images. To list all the images would be long and tiresome. 
I shall concentrate on a few areas only and state my main conclusion at the 
outset, namely that there is almost no repetition of imagery between the 
two poems. The Knight’s Tale has, for example, 18 references to animals 
(six to the lion, two each to the boar and the tiger and one each of the bear, 
the dog, the hare, the sheep, the mouse, the griffin, the steer and beasts in 
general). The Miller’s Tale has 8 animal references (the weasel, kid, 
calf, lamb, mouse, ape and the colt twice) .?° The only references in common 
are the sheep and the mouse and their signification is different in the two 
poems. The two lists differ not only in specific items but also in general 
classification. The animals of the Knight’s Tale are on the whole large, 
fierce, wild and noble which fits well with the courtly romance atmosphere 
of that tale. By contrast, and equally suitably, the animals of the Miller’s 
Tale are the domestic animals of the English farmyard. 

The same kind of distinction can be seen in the flower imagery of the 
two poems. In the Knight’s Tale we have a rose, lilies and flowers in gene- 
ral;2¢ in the Miller’s Tale there is blossom on the branch, the primerole and 
possibly the piggesnye.” The birds of the Knight’s Tale (the crow, the raven 
and the cuckoo)** are not those of the Miller’s Tale which are the white 
duck, the turtle-dove, the swallow, the nightingale and the goose.” The plants 
and fruits of the Knight’s Tale are the citron, the tare, the ivy leaf, the oak 
and the boxtree.®° In the Miller’s Tale we have apples, pears, sloes, beans, 
cress, cinnamon, cetewale and licorice.** Even amonst miscellaneous ob- 
jects there are differences. The Knighi’s Tale has among other things a 
bucket in a well, a ring, a trumpet and a ball; the Muller’s Tale has milk, 


24 11, 1598, 1640, 1656, 1775, 2171, 2630, 1658, 1699, 1657, 2626, 1640, 1177, 1810, 1307, 1261, 
2133, 2149, 1309. 

25 I], 3234, 3260, 3704, 3389, 3346, 3263, 3282. 

26 ἢ, 1038, 1036, 2178, 982, 1037, 3048, 3059. 

27 IL. 3324, 3268. 

28 1]. 2692, 2143, 1810. 

29 ἢ 3576, 3706, 3258, 3377, 3317. 

30 11, 2167, 1570, 1702, 3017, 1838, 1302. 

31 ἢ, 3262, 3249, 3246, 3772, 3756, 3699, 2307. 


156 CHR. DEAN 


wool, a noble and a fan. Furthermore, whole areas of comparison as 
well as specific items differ. There are, for example, in the Knight’s Tale 
13 images referring to fire, 9 referring to religion and 10 to wounding and 
dying.** None of these is paralleled in the Miller’s Tale. 

There are no more than six images common to both poems. Coal asa 
measure of blackness appears twice in both tales. Lygurge has a bear’s 
skin which is col-blak (2142) and Arcite lies in the lists as black as any cole 
(2692). Alisoun’s collar is made of col-blak silk (3240) and later the night 
is as black as the cole (3731). Imprisonment in both poems is likened to being 
in a cage.* Palamon complains that he is dying here in a cage (1294) while 
John holds Alisoun narwe in cage (3224). A common image of falling into a 
snare describes how Arcite is captured by Fortune’s plans (1490) and how 
John is captured by love for Alisoun (3231). The conventional image of 
bright as gold appears in both poems (2141, 3314). 

The sixth common image is different. Emetrius’s voice is as ἃ trompe 
thonderynge (2174). Thunder here fittingly suggests the loudness of voice 
as well as the power and majesty of Emetrius himself. Loudness is also 
suggested in the Miller’s Tale in: 


This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart, 
As greet as it had been a thonder-dent (3806-7) 


but in addition we hear in the second thunder clap an ironic echo of the 
first. This is not similarity of image by coincidence but a deliberate artistic 
placing. Perhaps Alisoun’s black silk collar and Lygurge’s collar of black 
bear skin echo each other also. 

Though Chaucer’s range of reference in his imagery in these two tales 
is very wide and even though many of the images are in themselves stereo- 
typed, there is very little overlapping from poem to poem. This is a stylistic 
fact of some interest. We must naturally ask why there is such a difference. 
Two possibilities come to mind. It may be that the ideas and themes of the 
two poems are so different that differences of imagery inevitably follow. 
If this is true then the difference of imagery is incidental. Alternatively, if 


82 I]. 1533, 1908, 1958, 2165, 2174, 2614; 3236, 3249, 3256, 3315. 

38 Il. 2164, 1493, 1502, 1922, 2862, 2403, 2383, 2320, 1299, 1997, 2337, 1302, 1364; 2529, 2159, 
1237, 1226, 2228, 2948, 1460, 1562, 1055; 1574, 1564, 1043, 1078, 1118, 1567, 913, 1082, 2780, 
1096. 

34 This may or may not be an image. According to both the OED and MED, the word’s 
primary sense is that of a bird- or animal-cage. It is used in English from the 13th century. Sense 
2 in MED is‘a cage for prisoners, jail, prison, cell’ and an illustrative quotation from Mk T, where 
children are likened to birds, seems to provide the transition from the literal to the figurative use. 
On the other hand a quotation dated 1306 in MED seems already to use cage as a purely literal 
equivalent of prison cell. 


IMAGERY IN THE « KNIGHT’S TALE » AND THE  MILLER’S TALE » 157 


there is similarity of ideas and themes, then the difference of imagery be- 
comes the result of artistic choice by Chaucer and deserves closer study. 

Are there then any common themes or ideas in the two tales that we 
can compare? We can start with something simple and non-controversial, 
images of colour. Only two colours are in both tales, black and white. As 
we have seen black as coal occurs four times, twice in each tale. In addition 
Lygurge’s hair is as black as a raven’s feather and Arcite lies in the field as 
black as a crow.3® In the Miller’s Tale Alisoun’s eyebrows are as black as 
sloes and the night is as black as pitch.°* The black as coal simile seems to 
have no appropriateness to the subjects described as black. Further, coal 
is twice linked in a double comparison, once with pitch and once with a 
crow. The lack of any thematic justification for such a linking emphasizes 
clearly that for Chaucer black as coal is merely a cliché and that its use is 
purely mechanical. 

The other common colour, white, is less helpful. Arcite and Palamon 
fight like wild boars and froth as white as foam. Emetrius has an eagle as 
white as a lily. Alisoun’s barmcloth is as white as morning milk while Ab- 
solon wears a surplice as white as blossom on the branch.*’? We can deduce 
nothing from Chaucer’s use of these similes. But there are some similarities 
in the images of brightness. Lygurge’s bearskin has nails as bright as gold. 
Absolon’s hair shines as bright as gold and something of the same idea is 
contained in the likening of Alisoun’s face to a shining new noble. 

Absolon twice states his lack of interest in something through images: 
Of paramours he sette nat a kers (3756) and he roghte nat a bene/Of al his pley 
(3772-3). In the Knight’s Tale Arcite counts himself not worth a myie (1558) 
and judges all his sorrow to be not worth a rate (1570). Though it might 
be argued that the homely parallels of beans and cress suit the low domes- 
ticity of the Miller’s Tale, there is no corresponding elevation in the mite 
and tare of the Knight’s Tale. On the contrary, the éare-simile occurs twice 
in the Reeve’s Tale.8 In the Knight’s Tale, at least, these images are con- 
ventional. The same simile for violent action occurs in both tales. Arcite’s 
funeral fire burns as it were wood (2950) while Absolon cride and knokked as 
that he were wood (3436). Chaucer refers to a common rural pastime in each 
tale to describe a task that has to be done. The Knight likens his 
telling of his tale to ploughing a field (886-887) while Absolon, plotting 
his revenge, likens it to spinning tow on a distaff (3774). So far, it is 


35 1, 2143, 2692. 
36 I], 3246, 3731. 
87 JI, 1659, 2178, 3236, 3324. 
88 JI, 4000, 4056. 


158 CHR. DEAN 


reasonable to say that when a similar idea has appeared in each poem, 
Chaucer has tended to use the same or similar image. This would suggest 
that his use of imagery has followed the conventional and the mechanical 
and that no particular suiting to the tone of the poems has been attempted. 
However, to this point we have looked at only a few insignificant ideas far 
removed from the major themes of the tales. 

It is quite otherwise when we turn to the major themes of the tales. 
Here can be seen what Miss Spurgeon calls ‘iterative’ imagery, imagery 
linked together in a significant way so as to contribute to the total thematic 
statement of the poem. 

The nucleus of the Knight’s Tale is the love story of Palamon and Arcite.*# 
Both men fall in love and suffer its pangs. The images of the love story 
are individually commonplace but reviewed collectively they add up to a 
unified picture. The love story begins with the two heroes falling in love. 
A single image, that of wounding and death, is repeated: 

he bleynte and cride, “A!” 
As though he stongen were unto the herte ( 1078-9) 
But I was hurt right now thurghout myn ye (1096) 
The fresshe beautee sleeth me sodeynly 
Of hire that rometh in the yonder place (1118-9) 
Love hath his firy dart so brennyngly 
Ystiked thurgh my trewe, careful herte (1564-5) 
Ye sleen me with youre eyen, Emelye ! (1567) 


Being in love, thus, becomes imaginatively an after-death state and all 
the subsequent imagery of love derives from this fact. We see it in the 
young men’s physical appearance. Palamon is pale and deedly on to see (1082). 
He lyk was to biholde| The boxtree or the asshen dede and colde (1301-2). Arcite 
became as drye as is a shaft (1362) and as pale as asshen colde (1364). Their 
emotional state is also tied to this after-death image. When happy, which 
is rare, the lovers live in paradise. Arcite calls Palamon’s prison this (1237) 
because he can see Emily from there. When they are unhappy, their state 
is likened to hell. Arcite complains: Now is me shape eternally to dwelle| Noght 
in purgatorie, but in helle (1225-6) while Palamon cries to Venus of the tormentz 
of myn helle( 2228). The actual turmoil in their hearts is likened convention- 
ally to fire: 


The firy strokes of the desirynge 
That loves servantz in this lyf enduren (1922-3) 


39 As this paper does not attempt an entirely new reading of the Knight’s Tale, no summary and 
criticism of the existing material on the tale seems necessary. All critics recognize the love story. 
D. 5. Brewer, Chaucer, 2nd ed. (London), 1960), 91 says: “The great theme is Love.” Differences 
of opinion arise when the love story is related to tho there elements of the tale. 


IMAGERY IN THE « KNiGHT’S TALE » AND THE “ MILLER’S TALE’ » 159 


And al hir bisy torment, and hir fir 


Be queynt (2320-1) 
thilke hoote fir 
In which thow whilom brendest for desir (2383-4) 


For thilke fyr that whilom brente thee, 
As wel as thilke fyr now brenneth me (2403-4) 


and for love his hoote fires (2862) 


It is permissible, in this poem at least, to relate all this inner fire to the 
images of hell noticed above. 

This is the way in which love affects Palamon and Arcite. It is note- 
worthy that two people who are not emotionally involved in the love story, 
Theseus and the Knight-narrator, refer to love quite differently. For each 
of them, falling in love is to be caught in a net (1817, 1951). This makes 
us see love in an altogether different light. Man in love is reduced to the 
level of a small helpless animal or bird. It makes him petty and silly. 
The emotions that he feels become trivial and unimportant. 

The love affairs of Palamon and Arcite are set, however, against the 
background of human existence and we see their hopes and plans thwarted 
or furthered by external circumstances. This interplay between the private 
world of the lovers and the larger world outside them gives rise to a second 
imagery sequence, that of control and order in man’s world.” 

A series of images emphasizes the chance and mutability of life. First 
there are the three images of Fortune and her false wheel (925), Fortune 
playing at dice (1238) and Fortune capturing man in a snare (1490). 
Second, there are the images of the lovers falling from the crop of the tree 
to the briars (1532) and their going up and down like a bucket in a well 
(1533). Associated with these images of mutability are those indicating 
that all things, however stable they seem, must eventually pass away. The 
most significant expression of the idea appears in the extended image 
series : 

Loo the ook, that hath so long a norisshynge 

From tyme that it first bigynneth to sprynge, 

And hath so long a lif, as we may see, 

Yet at the laste wasted is the tree. 

Considereth eek how that the harde stoon 

Under oure feet, on which we trede and goon, 

Yet wasteth it as it lyth by the weye. 

The brode ryver somtyme wexeth dreye; 

The grete tounes se we wane and wende. (3017-25) 


40 Though the imagery pattern as such has not been identified, the theme of order has. See 
for example, D. Underwood, “The First of The Canterbury Tales,” ELH, 26 (1959), 455-469 and 
Muscatine, 181. 


160 CHR. DEAN 


Contrasting with these images of chance and change are others which 
emphasize control. Man is first seen apparently in control of his own af- 
fairs. The image of judging by weighing one thing against another im- 
plies control (1781). The image of holding a bridle in the hand indicates 
control of events (2376) and most emphatically of all the comparison of 
Theseus to a god on a throne (2529) suggests that man is in charge of his 
own destinies. It is significant that these images refer to Theseus who stands 
outside the love affair whereas the mutability images refer to Palamon and 
Arcite who do not. Set against the images of control is the striking image 
of false control: 

We faren as he that dronke is as a mous. 
A dronke man woot wel he hath an hous, 
And he noot which the righte wey is thider, 
And to a dronke man the wey is slider. 

And certes, in this world so faren we; 


We seken faste after felicitee, 
But we goon wrong ful often, trewely (1261-7) 


Here we meet the idea of men making the wrong decisions and failing to 
achieve their ends. One of the ironies of the poem is that Theseus, who 
seems so very much in control of events on earth, is in fact in a position 
much closer to that of the drunken man.*! Theseus’s plans are consistently 
thwarted. His intended triumphal entry into Athens is thwarted by the 
widows at the gate; his plan to keep Arcite in prison perpetually is changed 
at the intervention of his friend, Perotheus; his decision to kill Palamon 
and Arcite when he finds them fighting in the woods is altered at the request 
of the ladies while his careful plans to avoid death in the tournament are 
destroyed by the direct intervention of the gods. 

Real control of man’s affairs in this poem rests with forces outside him. 
Though the gods seem indifferent to man’s affairs as Palamon charges in 
two strong images: 

What is mankynde moore unto you holde 


Than is the sheep that rouketh in the folde ἢ 
For slayn is man right as another beest. (1307-9) 


in fact they are not and the tangled affairs are finally straightened out by 
Saturn. Other images pointing to the control of the world by external 
agents are those of Fate deciding man’s life from the moment of his birth 
(1566) and the two images of the fair chain of love (2988, 2991). 

The Miller’s Tale presents love, or what passes for love, very differently 
from the Knight’s Tale. First John, falling in love with Alisoun, is likened 


41 Other critics have taken the opposite view, thus Muscatine, 183-184, and Frost, 297-298. 


IMAGERY IN THE « KNiGHT’S TALE» AND THE « MILLER’S TALE » 161 


to a man falling into a snare (3231). This immediately links him with the 
somewhat cynical observers in the Knight's Tale, of whom the same image 
is used, and disassociates his love at once from the spiritual kind of love 
felt by Arcite and Palamon. But even further away are Absolon and Nicho- 
las for neither of them fall in love at all. Absolon, in an apt image, is likened 
to a cat who, if Alisoun had been a mouse, would have seized her at once. 
For Nicholas, the situation is even more direct. One day he fell to rage and 
pleye (3273) and prively he caughte hire by the queynte (3276). We see both of 
them thinking of a woman as a prey to be hunted and seized. Their atti- 
tude is that of Troilus before he was smitten by love’s arrows. He cynically 
called women prey (I. 201). By contrast, Arcite and Palamon feel as Troilus 
did after he fell in love. 

Alisoun is painted as a delectable morsel or a draught to drink. She 
is bragot (3261) or meeth (3261). She is Absolon’s hony (3617), hony-comb 
(3698) and sweete cynamome (3699). She is a mouse pursued by a cat (3346-7). 
Fruit — sloes (3246), pears (3248) and apples (3262) — enter into her des- 
cription and milk (3236) into the description of her clothes. Absolon, 
deprived of her love, mourns like a lamb for the teat (3704) and loses his 
appetite so that he can eat no more than a maid (3707). The idea sugges- 
ted is that love, like eating and drinking, is a basic physical necesstiy, 
difficult to restrain and not wholly to be condemned when not held in check. 
Length of service and total loyalty to one woman, basic ideas in the love 
philosophy of the Knight’s Tale, are no more possible in the Miller’s Tale 
than abstention from food would be. Equally, just as in eating, once the 
food is consumed, the lover must turn elsewhere for more. We have no 
doubt that this is just what Nicholas will do.# 

We notice further that the young men in the Miller’s Tale suffer no 
surging passions of fire. At the most they lose their appetites. When an 
image from the world of the Knight’s Tale is used with its noble connotations, 
such as the love of the turtle-dove, it is immediately burlesqued by its 
comic juxtaposition with that of the lamb sucking the teat.“ Love is 
simply a malady in the Miller’s Tale and it can be healed (see 3757). What 
is a serious emotion in the Knight’s Tale, leading to literal as well as meta- 


42 H.R. Patch, On Rereading Chaucer (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), 182 calls her “a delicious mor- 
sel.” 

43 W.F. Bolton, “The Miller’s Tale: An Interpretation,” Med Sv., 24 (1962), 88 points out that 
Nicholas is a traditional name for gluttons as well as lechers. The portrayal of Alisoun by food 
imagery is particularly appropriate in his case. 

44 This is only one example of the comic juxtaposition of the two styles. For further examples 
see Donaldson and also G. Stillwell, “The Language of Love in Chaucer’s Miller’s and Reeve’s 
Tales and in the old French Fabliaux,” ΖΕΟΡ, 54 (1955), 693-699. 


162 CHR. DEAN 


phorical death, in the Miller’s Tale, is finally dismissed as a childish mis- 
demenour: 


paramours he gan deffie, 
And weep as dooth a child that is ybete. (3758-9) 


In the final count it provokes mirth and amusement all round (3855-8). 

The other major image theme that runs through the Miller’s Tale is the 
likening of people to animals or birds. We meet this especially in the pic- 
ture of Alisoun where she is compared to a weasel (3234), a kid (3260), 
a calf (3260) and a colt twice (3263, 3282). Later she is a mouse (3346), 
pursued by Absolon who is a cat. The wool of the wether image (3249), 
the reference to morning milk (3236) and piggesnye (3268), which suggests 
a pig as well as its primary sense of a flower, completes the list of animal 
images referring to Alisoun. Meanwhile Absolon is compared to an ape 
(3389) and likens himself to a lamb (3704). Alisoun is called a bird three 
times by Absolon (3699, 3726, 3805) and is likened to a swallow on a barn 
(3258) and a duck (3576). She is held in a cage by her husband (3224) 
which again suggests a bird comparison. Absolon’s eyes are as grey as 
those of a goose (3317); he sings like a nightingale (3377) and compares 
himself to a turtle-dove (3706). John’s falling into a snare (3231) makes 
us think of the fate of an animal or bird 

With the sole exception of the ape, and even it might have been seen at 
village sideshows, all the animals and birds are common ones of the English 
countryside, if not actually of the farm. This serves to keep the mood and 
tone firmly on the ground and ordinary. There is none of the grandeur 
suggested by the lions, tigers, griffins and eagles of the Knight's Tale. Second- 
ly, while the animal imagery can suggest the lustful nature of humanity 
with consequent moral overtones, the simple domesticity of the images 
and the emphasis on youth (kid, calf, colt) partially mitigate the sinfull- 
ness and if they do not make it innocent at least they make it normal and 
expected. In the Miller’s Tale, man as a lustful animal, is simply being 
himself. 


45 Some commentators have felt that moral judgment is unimportant in the tale, thus Craik, 
5-6 and P. V. D. Shelly, The Living Chaucer (Philadelphia, 1940), 246. But other critics, while not 
denying the humour of the tale in any way, have seen a moral judgment too. Amongst such critics 
are Bolton and D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton, 1962), 384. The most important 
study of the tale from this point of view is that by R. E. Kaske, “The Canticum Canticorum in the 
Miller’s Tale,” SP, 59 (1962), 479-500. Kaske gives a long account of much (but not all) of the 
imagery in the Miller’s Tale and relates it to the Canticum Canticorum hoping to show “a pattern of 
related allusions to the Canticum Canticorum and some of its medieval interpretations, centred in a 
profoundly comic association of Absolon with the sponsus and of Alisoun with the sponsa”’ (479). 
While not wishing to “minimize the literal narrative,” (497) or to “impose a distinct allegorical 


IMAGERY IN THE « KNIGHT'S TALE» AND THE « MILLER’S TALE’ » 163 


In conclusion, a study of Chaucer’s imagery is seen to have a direct 
value for the appreciation of his poetry. The overall view of his images 
leads us to the conclusion that his style is usually to avoid all but the plain- 
est images. This simplicity contrasts effectively with his emphatic use of 
vivid imagery at key points. More importantly, however, it can be demon- 
strated that Chaucer’s imagery transcends the merely stylistic and decora- 
tive and ultimately leads to iterative imagery or imagery patterns which 
have a significant contribution to make to the understanding of his works. 
If this still does not make Chaucer a modern poet in C. Day Lewis’s sense, 
it at least brings him much closer to the mainstream of English poetry. If 
he is still not the father of English poetry, he is much more than simply a 
many-times removed medieval cousin. 


University of Saskatchewan. 


significance on every part,” (497), Kaske does argue that the associations he makes give the tale 
“a moral edge” (497). Some objections to Kaske’s study seem legitimate. First, his centre of 
interest is mainly the relationship between Alisoun and Absolon to the relative neglect of Nicholas. 
Yet the two are of equal importance in the literal story at least. Second, in Kaske’s paper the as- 
sociations that he argues for tend to become central to his judgment of the poem’s meaning, yet 
at the same time he grants that the reminisences upon which they are based are not central to the 
poem but “flicker sporadically over the tale” (497). Some of the parallels that he cites are rather 
strained and not easy to accept, a fact that he seems to be aware of himself (see pp. 491, 495, 498). 
Lastly, Chaucer clearly intended the Miller’s Tale to contrast with the Knight’s Tale. If we see a 
relationship between the Miller’s Tale and the Canticum Canticorum then of necessity there must also 
be a relationship between the Knight’s Tale and the Canticum, too. Thus caritas and a “quite diffe- 
rent attraction” (480)’ this time that of Palamon and Arcite for Emily, would have to be compared. 
But there seems no sense of this in the Knight’s Tale. That is a problem that Chaucer meets in 
Troilus and Criseyde. 


Parce Continuis 


Some Textual and Interpretive Notes* 


BRIAN STOCK 


THE learned Latin sequence, Parce Continuis, was first published by 

Wilhelm Meyer in 1911.1 His text, based upon a single, thirteenth- 
century manuscript in the Laurenziana,? was reproduced in F. J. E. 
Raby’s Secular Latin Poetry? and in two publications by Giuseppe Vecchi.4 
Peter Dronke discovered a fragment of the same poem in an Augsburg 
manuscript® written in two different south German hands of the early 
twelfth century. He first published his text in 1962° and later in the second 
volume of Medieval Latin and the Rise 0 of European Love-Lyric.? Dronke made a 
redaction of the stanzas of the Florence manuscript (F) which were not 
found in the Augsburg version (A), including a textual comparison between 
the two. He eliminated, among other mistaken views about the poem, the 
theory that it could have been written by Peter Abelard. In 1965, the late 
Dr. Raby, whom 1 assume had not seen Dronke’s second volume, published 
a text and interpretation of Parce Continuis®’ which were in some ways unsa- 
tisfactory. Nonetheless, with his usual erudition, Raby added considera- 
bly to our insight into the poem’s intellectual milieu, placing it in the tradi- 
tion of amor /amicitia literature which flourished primarily between the ninth 
and the twelfth century. 


* J should like to thank J. Reginald O’Donnell, C. 8. B., and Leonard Boyle, O.P., for help in 
checking the text, and Prof. and Mrs. M. P. Gilmore, Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies, 
Florence, for their hospitality while I looked at this and other manuscripts. 

1 “Zwei mittellateinische Lieder in Florenz,” Studi letterari ὁ linguistici dedicati a Pio Rajna nel 
quarantesimo anno del suo insegnamento (Milan, 1911), 151-161. 

2 Bibliotheca Aedilium Florentinae ecclesiae codex 197, fol. 131%. The manuscript consists of a 
Thebiad, into which nine medieval Latin songs have been inserted at fol. 130-131 in a different 
hand. Meyer has described the collection which contains mostly love songs; art. cit., 149-150. 

3 A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1957) vol. 2, 313-314. 

4 Pietro Abelardo, I ‘Planctus’ (Istituto di Filologia romanza dell? Universita di Roma, testi 6 manuali ed. 
A. Monteverdi, no. 35), (Modena, 1951), 72-77; Poesia latina medievale, 2nd ed. (Parma, 1958), 
194-201. 

5. Bischéfliches Ordinariat 5, fol. 1°. 

§ “The Return of Eurydice,” Classica et Mediaevalia 23 (1962-1963), 211-212. 

7 (Oxford, 1965-1966) ; text in vol. 2, (1966), 341-352. 

8 “Amor and Amicitia: a Mediaeval Poem”, Speculum 40 (1965) 559-610. 


« PARCE CONTINUIS » 165 


A poem which has attracted so many major historians is perhaps entitled 
to still another investigation. In what follows, I have reproduced and re- 
read the Florence manuscript, which is interesting from paleographical, 
textual, and interpretive points of view. However, so much work has been 
done on Parce Continuis that I neither claim originality for much of the criti- 
cal work necessary to establish the text, nor have I felt I needed to repeat 
all the previous scholarship, which, for such a short poem, is quite detailed. 
Those who wish to review these problems are referred to the second, revised 
edition of Dronke’s volumes, to appear soon, the proofs of which I was kind- 
ly allowed to see. As Dronke has virtually solved all the cruces of the 
Augsburg version, I have concerned myself only with the later, Florentine 
reworking of the poem. If this work possesses a unified theme at all, it is 
one which is heavily indebted, not only to classical motives as Raby illus- 
trated, but to contemporary ideas as well. Without proposing to solve all 
the problems connected with F, I have added, in the commentary which 
follows the text, a fresh look at some of these relationships. 


TEXT PARAPHRASE 

la <P>arce continuis, Cease, I beg, 
deprecor, lamentis. your incessant complaints. 
neque uincularis; For you are not enchained; 
legem amoris you complain too much 
nimium queraris. of the law of love. 

10 Duris in cotibus Among hard rocks 
Rodope aut Ysmarus Rhodope or Ismarus 
illum progenuit, brought him forth, 
neque nostri generis a boy not of our kind 
puerum aut sanguinis. or blood. 

2a Non reluctanti Although no one oppose, 
stetit ut rebellis. he renews the fight. 
sepe consilia Often he deceives 
fallit exquisita. choicest counsels. 
gaudet querelis, He delights in griefs, 
gaudet et lamentis. delights in laments; 
ridet et exangues laughs at feeble, 
miseros amantes. miserable lovers, 
ridet et precordia laughs at breasts 


trahere suspiria. heaving sighs. 


166 


2b 


3a 


3b 


4a 


Cuntos euasit 

nexus infortunii; 

cui® sola compede 
stringor adamante. 
placet honestas; 

urit, urit utilitas; 
herent et uerba 
nobis tandem unica. 
non altis sermonibus, 
solis loquor fidibus. 


Quantos preterita 
genuere secula 
quos ins<o>ubili 
nexu graciosa 
iunxit amicicia: 
Nisum ut Eurialo, 
Pirothoum Theseo, 
Pollinicem Tideo ἢ 


Quid Dauid et Ionathe 
fedus uenerabile, 

quid’® amici memorem 
planctum lacrimabilem; 
postquam Saul cecidit, 

Ionathas occubuit, 

dum sederet, Sichelec 

ceso,! uictor Amalech ἢ 


Viuit adhuc Piramus, 
Thisbe dilectissimus, 
et amoris concia 
parietis rimula 
primum illis cognita; 
qua sibi colloquia 
diuidebant intima. 
optimus colloquiis, 
sed infidus. osculis, 
disparabat corpora 
paries, spiritibus 
solis quidem peruius. 


B. STOCK 


He avoids all 

the coils of misfortune; 

to him I am bound 

with a single, adamantine fetter. 
His honour pleases; 

his service burns, burns; 

his unique words, at last, 

catch us; 

not by lofty discourse, 

I say, but only with lovesong. 


How many men 

have past ages produced 
whom beloved friendship 
united 

with an indissoluble bond: 
as Nisus to Euryalus, 
Pirithoiis to Theseus, 
Polynices to Tydeus ἢ 


Why need I recall 

the ancient bond 

of David and Jonathon, 

why the tearful lament forhis friend ? 
After Saul fell, 

Jonathon was slain, 

and with Ziglag overcome, 

the Amalekite sat as victor. 


Pyramus, most beloved of Thisbe, 
still lives in memory, and as well, 
the little fissure in the wall, 
known first to them, 

knowing their love. 

Through it they shared 

intimate conversations. 

Best for talking, 

but unfaithful to kisses, 

the wall, 

pervious alas to souls only, 
kept their bodies apart. 


9. MS unclear; Dronke reads tut, Meyer emends to qui. 
10 MS quod. 
42 MS seso. 


5a 


5b 


« PARCE CONTINUIS » 167 


Seuus amor ultima 
urget in discrimina. 
non ignis incendia 
Bosforis!? non aspera 
perorrescit equora. 
quas dum sepe salebras 
juuenis temeritas 
superasset, uincitur 
tandem maris estibus. 
operitur Sestias ; 
Sestias, in speculis, 
ponto perit iuuenis. 


Forma, uoce, lingua bonus 
gratus erat unice 

solus Trachas!® inter omnes 
Orpheus Euridice; 

cuius capto federe 

gestit omnes fugere; 
dumque procos fugit illa 
dente petit letifer, 

calle pressus, coluber. 
Orpheus illam modulis 
urget insolabilis. 


Quercus illum uatem sequi 
subigebant cithare 

dulces modi, quos uocalis 
temperat Calliope, 

sed nec curas pectore 
efficax est demere. 

solam uates non adesse 
queritur Euridicen. 
ingemit Euridicen : 

atque semel fidicen 

retulit Euridicen. 


12 MS Borsris 
13 MS Trarchas 


Cruel Amor urges us 

to the ultimate dangers. 

Neither at fire’s blaze 

nor the Bosporus’ rough waters 
does he tremble. 

Though the rash youth (Leander) 
often overcame these rough ways, 
in the end even he is conquered 
by the billowing sea. 

His Sestian maid is hidden (from him); 
she perishes on the watchtower, 
he on the sea. 


Favoured in beauty, song, and lang- 
uage, 

Orpheus, unique among Thracians, 

was alone beloved 

by Eurydice. 

Caught by her bond, 

he desires to flee everyone; 

and while she flees her own suitors, 

the deadly viper, concealed by the 
path, 

seeks her with his bite. 

Inconsolable, Orpheus 

urges her on with his songs. 


The sweet notes of the lute, 
which Calliope, singing, tempers, 
compelled even the oaks to follow 
the poet, but she is not 

powerful enough to remove 

the griefs from his heart. 

The poet laments 

that his only Eurydice is not there. 
He bemoans Eurydice: 

and at once the lutanist 

brought back ‘Eurydice.’ 


168 B. STOCK 


6a Liquid auras superiores. 
placet inanes uisere sedes 
fidibus in querulis 
incombendo modulis. 
Manes sistit; penas fugit; 
Cerberi domantur ora. 
Cerberi, Proserpine 
dire manent lacrime 
prius incontigue. 


6b Tandem mitis carmine uatis 


superum terror, inferum rector: 


‘tollat’ inquid ‘Orpheus 
meritam melodibus, 

lege certa, ne respectat;4 
sola gaudeat dilecto...’ 


* 
* Ok 


fallit amor Orphea; 
respicit ad premia. 


7a Repetita lege, 
labitur Euridice. 
rursus uates 
parat ire Manes. 
uector Stigio 
prohibet ab alueo. 
luridus ab inferis 
redditur auris 
fata merens coniugis. 


7b Vincit amor omnia, 
regit amor omnia. 
fuga tantum 
fallitur amantum. 
fraude subdola 


He leaves the upper air. 

Relying on the plaintive melodies 

of his lute, 

he resolves to visit 

the regions of death. 

He stills the Manes; 

he shuns their torments. 

The mouths of Cerberus aresubdued. 

The harsh tears of Cerberus and 
Proserpine, 

formerly untappable, flow. 


The terror above, the judge below, 

meek, at length, through the poet’s 
song, 

declares: ‘Let Orpheus raise 

her whom he has merited 

through his music, 

but with a fixed condition, 

that he not look back, 

Let his unique love rejoice 

in her beloved. 

Amor deceives Orpheus; 

he looks back at his prize. 

Called back through the proviso, 

Eurydice slips away. 

The poet prepares 

to cross the shades anew. 

The steersman keeps him away 

from the Stygian slime. 

Dispirited, he returns 

from the lower world, 

bemoaning the fate of his wife. 


Love conquers all, 

love rules all. 

The flight of so many great lovers 
is betrayed. 

Hands, ears, eyes, 


14. Perhaps a rare use of ne with the indicative in the sense “see that...;” Hofmann-Szantyr, 
Lateinische Syntax und Stilistik, (Munich, 1965), 327. 


« PARCE CONTINUIS » 169 


subnectendo modula by adding little gestures 
manus, aures, oculi in sly deceit, 
strenual® paci can scarcely deny the passion 
uix negant cupidini. to be endured for love. 
8 Do quietem fidibus; I give rest to my lute; 
finem, queso, luctibus and you, I beg, give rest 
tu curas alentibus. to those nurturing cares through 


grief. 


If this poem presents some difficult textual points, it also submits to a 
variety of interpretations. Until a third manuscript is discovered, we may 
treat F as an independent version based upon A, written around the third 
quarter of the twelfth century by an author who was acquainted with an 
exceptional amount of classical poetry as well as some contemporary 
writers like Alan of Lille and Peter Abelard. 

Although certain parts of the poem remain problematical, I should like 
to suggest that the classical and contemporary allusions are employed to 
achieve a conscious unity of design. The major theme is really amor, as 
Meyer saw clearly,!® conceived both as an allegorical figure in 1b and asa 
" generic concept under which exempla are arranged in two categories: ami- 
citia, love of man for man, and amor, love of man for woman, Why the poet 
proceeds from the first to the second type of love is not entirely clear, but 
there is nothing in the text itself which suggests that he is trying to contrast 
the two.” Only if we look at the poem from this viewpoint, moreover, can 


15 MS sternuo. I have retained the orthography of paci for pati, as above liguid for liquit. 

16 “Offenbar also ist das Hauptthema des Gedichtes die Liebe und besonders das mit ihr ver- 
bundenes Unheil. Die Freundschaft, die milde, segensreiche Schwester der Liebe, is eine Haupt- 
sache im Gedichte; sie soll nur duch ihren Gegensatz das unheilvolle Wesen der Leibe klarer 
machen;” art. cif. 153. 

17 This, it seems to me, was Raby’s fundamental error in interpretation, despite the numerous 
important insights he gave us in the article cited (1965). He was, of course, correct in stating that 
amor and amicitia were often contrasted in the Middle Ages; but in citing Publilius Syrus, even 
through Seneca, he chose a fragment too obscure for the author of Parce Continuis, whose allusions 
to the classics generally refer to well known authors and episodes. In addition, the medieval 
tradition did not always contrast amor and amicitia, From the ninth century especially, the two 
began to be viewed often as different aspects of an underlying spiritual love in both secular and 
religious verse; see Adele Fiske, “Alcuin and Mystical Friendship,” Studi medievali, serie terza 2 
(1961), 551-575. Hennig Brinkmann, one of the first to draw attention to the importance of 
this literary tradition, cited Parce Continuis as an example of its complexity; Geschichte der lateinischen 
Liebesdichtung im Mittelalter (Halle, 1925), 10 ff; 28. As interesting a title as “Amicitia Soror A- 
moris” would make, it is beyond this article. One passage from Aelred’s De Spirituali Amicitia, 
however, serves as an excellent gloss to the friendship stanzas: “Ab amore, ut mihi videtur, ami- 


170 B. STOCK 


we account for the friendship stanzas as an integral part of its design, if 
indeed they are, and not as an interpolation in a previous version from which 
they were omitted. The simplest way of viewing the overall structure of 
the poem is as follows: 

1. invocation to Amor, 1-30, 

2. amor and amicitia, 31-46. 


3. love for woman; (a) Pyramus and Thisbe, 

(b) Hero and Leander, 

(c) Orpheus and Eurydice, 47-119. 
4. conclusion : omnia vincit amor, 120-131. 


The poem begins with the common classical and medieval device of 
addressing a work to an imaginary friend who is suffering from the torments 
of love ; it ends with an equally rhetorical appeal to Amor to grant peace 
to all those whom he has victimized. The poem’s exempla amorum are placed 
within the frame of these two statements. 

After describing Amor’s inhuman birth and inhumane disregard for those 
in his power, the poet asserts that he is bound to him by an inflexible chain. 
He then parodies the language of amicitia, as it was handed down by Cicero 
and Seneca to the medieval schools, in describing the pervasive effects of 
amor. It is clear, even here, that amor does not refer to the classical notion 
of love as a form of madness, but to a more embracing concept. The refe- 
rences in the exempla “cannot... be intended to contrast the blessedness of 
friendship with the fatality of love. For each of the four friendships mentio- 
ned falls under the shadow of death..... The examples of amicitia point, if 
anything, in the same direction as those of amor: no deep human attachment 
can remain permanently blessed on earth. 18 

Let us look a little closer at the four examples themselves. The first three 
may be taken from classical sources, but they may also come, as the fourth, 
from Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus. In the second book of Alan’s allegorical 
epic on the formation of a perfect man there is a description of the personi- 
fied arts and virtues who are to be sent to God in the form of a chariot of 
human knowledge in order to beg an exemplar for the soul of the nouus 
homo who, in a moral as well as a physical sense, is to inaugurate a reign of 
natural harmony on earth. The allegorical goddess Concordia plays a leading 
role in this part of the poem. It is she who unites Prudentia and Ratio in 


cus dicitur, ab amico amicitia. Est autem amor quidam animae rationalis affectus per quem ipsa 
aliquid cum desiderio quaerit et appetit ad fruendum 3 Per quem et fruitur eo cum quadam in- 
teriori suavitate, amplectitur et conservat adeptum ... Porro amicus quasi amoris, vel, ut qui- 
busdam placuit, ipsius animi custos dicitur ...” PL 195, 663B-C. 

18 Peter Dronke, op. cit., 348. 


« PARCE CONTINUIS » 171 


favour of the plan, despite their individual doubts about its chances of 
success. Describing her entrance onto the stage of the epic, Alan portrays 
on her garments some of the famous amuicitiae of antiquity: 


Vnius uultus, uno contenta colore 

Vestis in ornatum membrorum transit, eisdem 
Sic aptata foris quod eis inscripta putetur. 

Illic arte sua vitam pictura secundam 

Donat eis quos castus amor, concordia simplex, 
Pura fides, uera pietas coniunxit et unum 

Esse duos fecit purgati fedus amoris ; 

Nam Dauid et Ionathas ibi sunt duo, sunt tamen unum ; 
Cum sint diuersi, non sunt duo mente sed unus ; 
Dimidiant animas, sibi se partitur uterque. 

Vt sibi Pyrithotis se reddat, redditus orbi 
Theseus inferni loca, monstra, pericula uictat, 
Viuere posse negat in se, nisi uiuat in illo ; 
Tydeus arma rapit, ut regnet Thydeus alter 

In Polinice suo pugnat seseque secundum, 
Dum regnare cupit sibi, poscere regna uidetur. 
Alter in Eurialo comparet Nisus et alter 
Eurialus uiget in Niso ; sic alter utrumque 
Reddit et ex uno comitum pensatur uterque.” 


Thus we see all those whom “pure love, simple concord, true faith, and 
genuine piety” had once united have their tragic ends undone through a 
new, eternal “bond of love.” As exactly the same examples appear in 
Parce Continuis, may we not assume at least a similarity of intention ? 
The most famous example of friendship in the group is David and Jo- 
nathon. In contrast to the simple list of classical amicztiae, the poet here 
devotes a stanza to their relationship. His source must be the description 
in the Vulgate, where the passionate strength of the bond between the two 
friends is unmistakable: 
Et factum est cum complesset loqui ad Saul, anima Jonathae conglutinata est 
animae David, et dilexit eum Jonathas quasi animam suam. Tulitque eum 


Saul in die illa, et non concessit ei ut reverteretur in domum patris sui. Inierunt 
autem David et Jonathas foedus ; diligebat enim eum quasi animam suam.”° 


This relationship, which medieval glossators normally did not comment 
on,” does not fall within the normal classical dichotomy amor/amicitia. If 
this is the poet’s idea of amicitia, then surely it is a type of amor, not a con- 


19 Alain de Lille, Anticlaudianus, ed. R. Bossuat (Paris, 1955), Bk. 2, 178-196, p. 78. 

20 1 Reg. 18:1-3. 

21 The Glossa Ordinaria, citing Rabanus Maurus (?), simply says: Jonathas dilexit David ... 
PL 113, 558A; cf. Hugh of St. Victor, Adnotatiunculae in Librum Regum Secundum, PL 175, 11-101; 
Aelred, De Spirituali Amicitia, Bk. 3, PL 195, 692-693. 


172 B. STOCK 


trasting sentiment. What the author of Parce Continuis appears to have done 
is to provide a spiritual context for amor which includes both friendship 
and the love of man for woman. Compare, for instance, the friendship 
stanzas with a few lines from David’s lament for Jonathon, noting the 
language in which the relationship is described: 

Jonathas in excelsis tuis occisus est. 

Doleo super te, frater mi Jonatha, 

decore nimis et amabilis super amorem mulierum. 


Sicut mater unicum amat filium suum, 
ita ego te diligebam.™* 


Alan of Lille’s highly abstract portrayal of friendship and the language 
of the Vulgate bring us very close to the idea of amicitia in Parce Continuis. 
Its spirituality, moreover, is carried over to the next set of examples. 
The first of these is Pyramus and Thisbe. There is a striking difference 

in the nature of the love experience in Ovid and in Parce Continuis. For 
Ovid, love is a totally consuming experience presented in sensual terms: 
it involves both the ears with which the two lovers hear each other through 
the crack in the wall and the kisses which the wall denies them: 

fissus erat tenui rima, quam duxerat olim 

cum fieret, paries domui communis utrique. 

id vitium nulli per saecula longa notatum — 

quid non sentit amor ? — primi vidistis amantes 

et vocis fecistis iter ; tutaeque per illud 

murmure blanditiae minimo transire solebant. 

saepe, ubi constiterant, hinc Thisbe, Pyramus illinc, 

inque vices fuerat captatus anhelitus oris, 

‘Invide’ dicebant ‘paries, quid amantibus obstas ἢ 

quantum erat, ut sineres toto nos corpore iungi, 

aut, hoc si nimium est, vel ad oscula danda pateres.’ 

nec sumus ingrati: tibi nos debere fatemur, 

quod datus est verbis ad amicas transitus aures. 


723 


Ovid’s drama and narrative skill are not reflected in Parce Continuis, where 
the example of Pyramus and Thisbe possesses an emblematic significance, 
almost as if the poet were describing only one scene in the storyfrom a medie- 
val miniature. As in his other exempla, the details remain misty, the nar- 
rative, episodic. In his reworking of Ovid’s metaphor of the fissure, how- 
ever, he makes one change, consciously or unconsciously, which adds a 
new spiritual context: he sees the wall allowing their souls to commune but 
not their bodies. He imitates Ovid in the personification of rima/rimula, 
but tends to fashion out of the episode a metaphysical conceit. If there is 


22 TI Reg. 1: 26. 
23 Ovid, Met., 4, 65-77. 


« PARCE CONTINUIS » 173 


a bridge between the stanzas on friendship and the scenes from famous 
love stories, it lies in the common, spiritual background for both types of 
amor. 

Turning to the other two examples of tragic lovers, there are a number of 
individual points worth noting. At 4b, describing Hero and Leander, the 
language is somewhat contorted. The stanza begins with the idea of fierce 
love urging one to discrimina. Leander, next introduced, fears neither the 
fire’s flames nor the rough seas. Continuing the idea of the first two lines, 
Leander is seen to fear neither the strength of his own desires nor the ob- 
stacles placed between him and their satisfaction. From the metaphor we 
then turn to reality: Leander, who conquered the obstacle of the sea is 
himself overwhelmed by the maris estibus. Aestus has a wide range of mean- 
ing — the billowy tossing of the sea, the union of hot and cold, or the pas- 
sionate commotion of the mind. The poet has progressed through the 
first two images to this one, which unites the metaphorical associations of 
discrimina, ignis incendia and aspera equora in one word. The last three 
lines of the stanza are somewhat difficult, but the same ideas seem to be 
continued. Hero is hidden from Leander: operio could refer to concealing 
thoughts as well as things in medieval Latin, since concrete terms were fre- 
quently made more abstract. Perhaps the Sestian maid must atone for the 
pride of Leander’s temeritas;# perhaps in operitur the poet intends that Le- 
ander’s love is concealed from him as he fails to overcome the sea. Con- 
cluding the twofold metaphor of the dangers of love, he then states that, 
as Leander perishes physically in the sea, Hero sees the death of her rela- 
tionship from her watchtower. The poet has thus presented us again with 
a situation in which the physical and spiritual are exploited for poetic 
reasons. Although the syntax of the following example of Orpheus and 
Eurydice is, if anything, more obscure than the above?®, the illustration 
points in the same direction. In the difficult stanza 7b, the conclusion 
seems to emphasize and to summarize what the previous exempla have 
stated: the disappointments of amor are very hard to bear. 

Parce Continuis thus appears to be a minor adaptation of the Freund- 
schaftsliteratur of the Middle Ages to some wider currents in medieval Latin 
love poetry. 


Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 


24 The only instance of temeritas in the Vulgate refers to disobedience and punishment: II Reg. 
6:7; cf. Archpoet, ed. Watenphul and Krefeld, 1, 45, falsa temeritas. 

25 Similar lines occur in MS Auxerre 243, ed. A. Vernet “Poésies latines des xm® et x1II° 
siécles,” Mélanges ... F. Grat. vol. 2 (Paris, 1949), 261-262. A probable source for the episode in 
Parce Continuis is Fulgentius, Mitologiarum III, X; ed. Helm, p. 77: “Postquam maritus ad inferos 
descendit legem accipit, ne eam conversus aspiceret; quam conversus et aspiciens iterum perdidit.” 


Repertorium Mertonense 


JAMES A. WEISHEIPL, O. P. 


a is a preliminary list of MSS of the writings of certain Merton 

Masters between 1300 and 1350 that I have noted in the course of 
my research on early Fourteenth Century physics at Oxford. This list 
has been utilized by A. B. Emden in his Biographical Register of the University 
of Oxford to A. Ὁ. 1500 (Oxford, 1957-59). It contains mainly the writings 
pertaining to the Faculty of Arts, whether written in Oxford or elsewhere, 
but it also contains some theological treatises. This preliminary checklist 
makes no pretence of being complete. However, I have tried to see as many 
of the MSS as possible myself. Those which I have not seen personally are 
marked with an asterisk. The Masters are listed in alphabetical order of 
place name and their writings are arranged according to the curriculum 
of studies. The works of Thomas Wilton, a Fellow of Merton College, are 
basically those listed by P. Glorieux (Répertoire des Mattres en Théologie de 
Paris, τι. 228, t. 1, 460-462), since I have nothing to add. 


LIST OF MERTON MASTERS NOTED 


1. Ashinden, John . : . , : : E : ξ . page 175 
2. Billingham, Richard ‘ : : . : : : . 176 
3. Bradwardine, Thomas . : ὃ 2 : : : ‘ : . 177 
4. Bredon, Simon ᾿ P : ὃ 2 ἥ . Σ ᾿ . 183 
5. Buckingham, Thomas. ‘ . : : Σ Ε : ᾿ . 184 
6. Burley, Walter : : ᾿ ᾿ : : Ἵ : : ᾿ . 185 
7. Campsale, Richard de . : ; ‘ ᾿ A Ε : ‘ . 208 
8. Collingham, William de . é : : " : 5 ᾿ : . 209 
9. Dumbleton, John . : : : : : ᾿ : . i . 210 
10. Estry, William de . ᾿ ‘ : ᾧ 7 : 5 ᾿ : . 21] 
11. Hennor, William de i ς . i 2 : Z F . 212 
12. Heytesbury, William : : 3 : Ε Ε 2 : : . 212 
13. Maduith, John F ᾿ 2 : : : : ἢ ᾿ ᾿ . 217 
14, Rede, William : : ᾿ : 3 4 - is R 3 . 218 
15. Segrave, Walter de : : . : : A ἕ A ὃ . 218 
16. Sutton, William de ; ‘ : : : : : : : . 219 
17. Swineshead, Richard . i ᾿ : : 2 So te ; . 219 
18. Tewkesbury (? John) . ἐ : ᾿ Ξ ὡ : : : . 221 
19, Wilton, Thomas . < ᾿ : : : : . : : . 222 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 175 


1, AsHINDEN, JOHN 


Biogr. Merton College Fellow in 1322 (Mert. Rec. 724) and still in 
1355 (Mert. Rec. 6032). Noted by Bale, Leland and Tanner under 
the forms of “Aeschendenus” and “Estwode”. See A. B. Emden, 1, 56. 


Works 


1) Summa judicialis de accidentibus mundi (1347-8). 
Inc. lib. I: “Intencio mea in hoc libro est compilare sentencias astro- 
logorum...” 
Expl. lib. I: “... completa est ergo hec compilacio tractatus primi 
summe iudicialis de accidentibus mundi in civitate Oxonie 
per mag. Joh. de Ascheldon, 20 die mensis Julii anno 1347.” 
Expl. lib. II: “... gracias quantas sufficio referens Deo patri cui sit 
honor et gloria et infinita secula Amen. Completa est hec 
compilacio tractatus secundi summe iudicialis de accidenti- 
bus mundi 18 die mensis Decembris anno Christi 1348.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. F. 207a (membr. xiv), fol. 1- 
« Amplon. F. 379 (5. xiv), fol. 99v-159 
Oxford, Bodl. 369 (SC 2479), (s. xv), fol. 1-379 
« Bodl. 714 (SC 2621), (s. xiv), fol. 1-235v 
« Savile 25 (SC 6571), (membr. xiv), fol. 1-163 [2nd Bk.] 
« Digby 225 (SC 1803), (membr. xv), fol. 1-243vb 
« Oriel College 23 (membr. xv), fol. 1-226 
Paris, Universitaire 598 (membr. xv), fol. 1-136 
Ed. Venice 1489, 1542. 


2) Tractatus de significatione coniunctionis Saturni et Martis in Cancro, que erat 
isto anno Christi 1357, octavo die Funit, et de significatione coniunctionis magne 
Saturni et Fovis, que erat anno Christi 1365 in 30 die Octobris hora 5 minutis 
22 (1365). 

Inc.: “Sicut dicit Ptholomeus in Centiologio...” 
Expl: “... ad presens sufficiant.” 
Cambridge, Emmanuel College (5. xv), fol. 4v-l4v 
London, B. M. Harley 637 (s. xv), fol. 129va-138vb 
« « Royal 12. F. XVII (s. xv), fol. 2- 
Oxford, Ashmole 393 (SC 6734), p. 82-98 
« Digby 176 (SC 1719), (membr. xv), fol. 42-49v 

3) Prognosticon de eclipsi lune universali, que contingit anno Christi 1345. 

Inc.: “Significatio eclipsis lune universalis...” 


Expl.: “... predicta significationibus.” 
Oxford, Bodl. Digby 176 (SC 1719), (membr. xv), fol. 9-16 


176 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


2, Brryincuam, RicHAaRD 


Buogr. Merton College Fellow in 1344 (Mert. Rec. 3676) and still in 1361 
(Mert. Rec. 6031). Frequently Bursar of the College. He, together 
with Richard Swineshead and others, was a supporter of Mag. John 
Wylyot in his tumultuous election to the Chancellorship in 1349 (Cal. 
of Close Rolls, Edw. III, 1349-1354, p. 74). See Emden 1, 188-9. 


Works 


1) Speculum iuvenum (or, De probationibus propositionum) 


Inc.: “Terminus est in quem resolvitur propositio ut in subiectum et 
predicatum...” 
Expl.: “... et possibile est hoc esse post sui corruptionem, sed ista est 
falsa, igitur et illa.” 
Assisi, Conv. 690, fol. 189-225 [anon.] 
Erfurt, Amplon. Q, 30 (8. xiv), fol. 144v-149v 
« Amplon. Q. 243 (8. xiv), fol. 52-53v [incompl. Ὁ] 
« Amplon. Ὁ. 245 (8. xiv), fol. 209-232v 
« Amplon. O. 75 (s. xiv), fol. 1-18 
Florence, Naz. Cent. Magl. V. 43 (membr. xiv-xv), fol. 1-12 
Oxford, Bodl. Auct. F. 5. 23 (SC 2674), fol. 1-4 
Padua, Antoniana XIX, 407 (a. d. 1469), fol. 40v-45v 
« Bibl. Univ. 1123 (membr. xiv), fol. 1lvb-14ra 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 674 (s. xiv), fol. 110-114 
« Vat. lat. 3038 (s. xv), fol. 1-13 
« Vat. lat. 3058 (s. xv), fol. 47-67v 
« Vat. lat. 3065 (s. xv), fol. 1-llv 
Venice, S. Marco, Z. lat. 277 (1728), (s. xiv), fol. 2-5v [with 
commentary] 
Vienna, Nat. Bibl. lat. 4698 (a. d. 1383), fol. 104-108 
Worcester, Bibl. Cathed. F. 118 (s. xv), fol. 43vb-45vb [with 
commentary of mag. Edward Upton] 
*Wurzburg, Minorit. I, 63, fol. 46v-51 


* * € * 


2) De sensu composito et diviso 


Inc.: “Pro sensu composito et diviso est sciendum et primo de compo- 
sitione est notandum quod nunquam est proposicio in sensu 
composito nisi ...” 

Expl.: “... significare que non consumuntur secundum compositum 

Ῥ g 
vel divisum. Ido hoc pro facultate puerorum comprehensiones 
feci et brevi. Explicit tractatus de sensu composito et diviso 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 177 


mag. Ricardi Bilingam anglici valde utilis et brevis.” 
Paris, B.N. lat. 14715 (membr. xiv), fol. 79-82 


3) Conclustones 
Inc.: “Tu credis aliquam proposicionem esse veram quam nullus homo 
credit esse veram...” 
Expl.: “... ad illud concludendo conclusionem.” 

Padua, Bibl. Univ. 1123 (membr. xiv), fol. 29ra-3lrb [Ex- 
pliciunt conclusiones date a mag. Riccardo bylyngham 
complete] 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 3065 (s. xv), fol. 21-25v 

Vienna, Nat. Bibl. lat. 4698 (a. d. 1373), fol. 108-1l4v 

4) Sophisma 

Inc.: “Numquid scire sit credere...” 

Expl.: “Explicit sophisma mag. Ricardi Bylyngham, quod sic incipit, 
numquid scire sit credere, etc.” 
Worcester, Bibl. Cathed. F. 35 (5. xv), fol. 107-109vb 


5) De significato proposicionis 
Inc .: “Utrum proposicio affirmativa vel negativa...” 
Expl.: “... Explicit intencio Bylyngham de significato proposicionis. ” 
Worcester, Bibl. Cathed. F. 35 (5. xv), fol. 109vb-110va 
Uncertain 


1) Consequentias 
Inc.: “Quia in sophismatibus probando...” [Pits 489] 


2) Proportiones 
Inc.: “Proportio quedam est communiter dicta...” 
{attributed to Billingham by Tanner (p. 100) and reference 
to MS Bodl. sup. A. 1 Art 98, fol. 7] 


3. BRADWARDINE, [THOMAS 


Biogr. Born about 1295, probably in the diocese of Chichester. First noted 
as a Fellow of Balliol College in August 1321, but by 1323 he became at 
least a probationary Fellow at Merton. His necessary regency in arts pro- 
bably between 1321-1323. In 1335 he relinquished his fellowship at Merton 
and joined the household of Richard de Bury. Chancellor of St. Paul’s 
Cathedral, London, from September 1337 until 1349. Appointed to the 
archbishopric of Canterbury on June 19, 1349, and consecrated at Avignon 
on July 10, 1349. Died of the plague at Lambeth, August 26, 1349. See 
Emden 1, 244-6 and 3, xv-xvi. 


178 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


Works 
1) Insolubilia (12 capitula) 


Inc. Prol.: “Solvere non est ignorantis vinculum 3° Metaph., capitulo 

primo. Quia ergo insolubilium vinculo...” 

Inc. cap 1: “Scias igitur quod insolubile capitur dupliciter secundum 
quod solubile vel solucio...” 

“... et sic ista sufficiant ad omnia insolubilia dissolvendum.” 
Bruges, de la Ville 500 (membr. xiv), fol. 134-143v 
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 434/434 (membr. xiv), 

fol. 10v-12v [incomplete] 

*Erfurt, Amplon. O. 76 (membr. xiv), fol. 6-2lv 
«  Amplon. Q. 276 (a. d. 1295-1333), fol. 163-167 [first 
six chapters] 

* «  Amplon. F. 135 (membr. xiv), fol. 17v-20v [without 
prologue and subtitled “incipiunt insolubilia swynesheyft. 
data Oxonie”] 

London, B. M. Royal 12. F. XIX (membr. xiv), fol. 149-152v 
[incomplete] 

Munich, Clm. 23530 (s. xv), fol. 210v-222 [“Beluardini de 
Anglia”] 

Oxford, Canon. Misc. 219 (a. d. 1393-5), fol. 53-57 

*Prague, Capit. Metrop. 1327 (s. xiv), fol. 47 ££. 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 2154 (s. xv), fol. 13-22rb [“Thome bralduar- 
dini anglici”] 
« Vat. lat. 3065 (s. xv), fol. 107v-116v [without pro- 
logue] 

Venice, 5, Marco, Z. lat. 301 (1576), (5. xiv), fol. 27-37 


2) Anthmetica speculativa 


Expl.: 


a) Inc.: “Horum que sunt aliud est continuum aliud discretum.”. 
Expl: “... hec est sesquioctava proportio differencia. Explicit aris- 
metica Bragward.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. F. 375 (s. xiv), fol. 15v-17v, 88v-92v 
* «  Amplon. Q. 23 (s. xiv), fol. 75-81ν 
Ed. Paris 1495, 1502, Valencia 1503 


b) Inc.: “Numerus est duplex: mathematicus qui dicitur numerus 
numerans et naturalis qui dicitur numerus numeratus. Nume- 
merus autem mathematicus...” 

Expl.: “... in sesquialtera proportione. Explicit arismetica Brag- 
wardine.” 
Munich, Clm. 24809 (s. xv), fol. 100v-106 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 179 


Vienna, Nat. Bibl. lat. 4951 (a. d. 1501), fol. 273-304v [with 
anon. commentary | 
« Nat. Bibl. lat. 4953 (a. d. 1466), fol. 36-61ν [with 
anon. commentary | 


3) Geometria speculatioa 
Inc.: “Geometria est assecutiva...” 
Expl.: “... sicut deducitur per hanc communionem evidenter ; et in hoc 
completa [est] quarta pars et ultima huius libri. Deo gracias. 
Expl. geometria Bragwardini.” 
*Basle, Univ. F. IV. 30, fol. 58-96 
*Erfurt, Amplon. F. 375 (mid xiv), fol. 1-15 
* «  Amplon. Q. 343 (late xiv), fol. 1-38 
*Escorial, O. II. 9, fol. 39-57v 
*Florence, Bibl. Naz. Conv. Soppr. J. IV. 29, fol. 73-99v 
*Krakow, Bibl. Jagell. 1919, pp. 61-137 
ἘΠ « Bibl. Jagell. 1859, pp. 347-367 
*London, B. M. Add. 17420, fol. 1-30 
*Lyons, Palais des Artes, 45, fol. 173-197v 
*Munich, Clm. 14908 (s. xv), fol. 224-299v 
*Naples, Bibl. Naz. VIII. C. lg, fol. 186v-234 
*Oxford, Bibl. Lyell Empt. 10 
*Paris, B. N. lat. 7368, fol. 28-55v 
*Prague, Univ. 44. F. 8, fol. 1-22v 
ne Univ. V. F. 6, fol. 98-134v 
* « Metrop. Bibl. L. 29, fol. 1-17 
*Torun, R. 4°. 2, pp. 105-110 
*Valencia, Univ. 320, fol. 1-20v 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 3102 (membr. xiv), fol. 85-111ν 
« Pal. lat. 1420 (s. xv), fol. 53-63 
« Pal. lat. 1380, fol. 237-260 
« Reg. lat. 1235, fol. 1-31 
« Ottobon. lat. 1389, fol. 4-51 
Ed. Paris 1511, 1530 


4) Tractatus de proportione velocitatum in motibus (1328) 

Inc. prol.: “Omnem motum successivum alteri in velocitate proporti- 
onari contingit...” 

Inc.: cap. 1: “Proportio vel est dicta communiter vel proprie. Est 
acccepta communiter in omnibus...” 

Expl.: “... situatur; sic ergo quid volumus lucide demonstratur. Per- 
fectum est enim opus de proportione velocitatum in motibus 
cum illis motoris auxilio a quo motus cuncti procedunt.” 


* * * ᾿Ξ 


180 ᾿ J. A. WEISHEIPL 


*Bruges, Bibl. de la Ville 500 (membr. xiv), fol. 158-172v 
Cologne, Stadtbibliothek XII, 1, W. 8°. 15 (membr. xiv) 
[anon. attr. to Albertus Magnus in cat.] 
Erfurt, Amplon. F. 135 (membr. xiv), fol. 20v-25 
«  Amplon. F. 380 (membr. xiv), fol. 49-58v 
« Amplon. Q. 325 (c. 1369), fol. 13-22 
Amplon. Q. 348 (a. d. 1393), fol. 13-22 
«  Amplon. Q. 385 (late xiv), fol. 1-16v 
«  Amplon. Ὁ. 387 (late xiv), fol. 1v-8 
London, B. M. Harley 3243 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-8v 
Oxford, Bodl. 676 (SC 2593), (s. xv), fol. 162-163v {anon. ] 
« Canon, Misc. 177 (a. d. 1395), fol. 164-170v 
« Digby 76 (SC 1677), fol. 110-120 
« Digby 228 (SC 1829), fol. 56-61 
*Padua, Antoniana, XX, 431 (s. xv) 
Paris, Β. N. lat. 6559 (membr. xiv), fol. 49-58 
«  B.N. lat. 14576 (membr. xiv), fol. 255-26lv 
« BLN, lat. 14734 (5. xv), fol. 1-34 
« BN. lat. 15105 (a. d. 1402), fol. 1-24 
« BN, lat. 16621 (5. xiv), fol. 202v-212v 
« Β. Ν. Nouv. Acq. lat. 625, (a. 4. 1348), fol. 62-70v 
*Prague, Cath. Chap. 1293 (s. xv), fol. 1-19 
Rome, Angelica 1017 (R. 6. 32), (membr. xiv), fol. 50-56v 
« Casanatense 267 (s. xiv), fol. 1-10 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 1108 (s. xiv-xv), fol. 69-81 
« Vat. lat. 1108 (s. xiv-xv), fol. 104-119v 
« Vat. lat. 2185 (s. xiv), fol. 23v-27v 
« Vat. lat. 4429 (s. xiv), fol. 23-29 
« Ottobon. lat. 179 (s. xiv), fol. 23-29 
Venica, S. Marco lat. VI, 62 (2549), (s. xv), fol. 99-111 
« S. Marco lat. VI, 155 (3377), (5. xv), fol. 92v-105 
«  §. Marco lat. VIII, 77 (3223), (s. xiv), fol. 1-14 [mu- 
tilatus in principio] 
« 8. Marco lat. VIII, 38 (3383), (a. 4. 1391), fol. 1-8 
Vienna, Dominikanerkloster 192/158 (membr. xiv), fol. 146- 
152v 
« Nat. Bibl. lat. 1312 (s. xiv), fol. 223v-242 [incomplete] 
Ed. Paris 1495, Venice 1505 (fol. 9-16v), Madison, Wis. 1955 


5) Tractatus de continuo 


* &© ΧΙ & κΧ 
a 


Inc.: “Continuum est quantum cuius partes ad invicem copulantur. 
Continuum permanens...” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 181 


Expl.: “... igitur continuatur et finitur seipso. Sic igitur primus liber 
qui est de compostitione continui ad sua essentialia, finem 
capit. Amen. Explicit tractatus Bradwardini de continuo.” 
Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 385 (late xiv), fol. 17-48 [anon.] 
Paris, B. N. Nouv. Acq. lat. 625 (membr. xiv), fol. 71v [ascr. 

but only beginning] 
Tourn, Quarto 2 (late xiv), pages 153-192 [ascr.] 


6) Tractatus de futuris contingentibus (partially published by B. M. Xiberta 
in Festschrift M. Grabmann (B. G. P. M. A., Suppl. III, 2) 1169-1180. 


7) Summa de causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum (1344) 


a) Inc. prol.: “Magnorum et multorum peticionibus...” 
Inc. lib. I: “In primis firmissime supponatur quod Deus est eterne 
perfectus...” 
*Budapest, Mus. Nat. 79 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-168 [abbrev. 3] 
Cambridge, Corpus Christi 24 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-271ν 
[perscriptum Lond. 1344] 
London, Lambeth Pal. 32 (membr. 1385; perscriptum Can- 
tab.), fol. 1-257 
Oxford, Merton College 71 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-263v 
« New College 134 (membr. xiv), fol. 3-322 [perscrip- 
tum London 1344] 
« Canon. Misc. 244 (membr. xiv Vincenza), fol. 1-221 
Padua, Anton. IX, N. 170 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-335 [perscrip- 
tum London. anno 1344] 
Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 15390 (paper 1477) 
« B.N. lat. 15976-15977 (membr. a. d. 1356) 
« B.N. lat. 3153 (membr. xiv) [imperfect beg. and end] 
*Rome, Angelica 623 (Q. 1. 10), (membr. Perscriptum Paris 
1352), fol. 1-204 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 1039 (perscriptum Paris 1357), fol. 1-175v 
« Vat. lat. 1040 (a. d. 1411), fol. 1-305v 
Vienna, Dominikanerkloster 91/67 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-147v 
ΠΡ. Π-ΠῚΠ] 


« Nat. Bibl. lat. 1312 (membr. xiv), fol. 9-69v [in- 
complete] 
« Nat. Bibl. lat. 1521 (membr. perscriptum Paris 


1345), fol. 1-166. 
Ed. Paris 1495, 1500, Venice 1505, Vienna 1515, London 1618. 
Cf. Stegmiiller, RS, nn. 896-898, 2; Doucet, Suppl., ibid. 


182 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


b) Epitome Summe de causa Dei 


Inc.: “Magnitudinem huius operis michi videbatur extervis prospici- 
enti tam in auctoritatum profunditate...” 
Vatican, Ottobon. lat. 662 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-120 


c) Tractatus de meditatione [extract from De causa Dei, lib. II, cap. 34, 
minus the corollarium] 


Inc.: “O magne, O mirabilis Deus noster...” 
Expl.: “... aut quis tibi sufficienter retribuet summe pater.” 
Vienna, Nat. Bibl. lat. 4487 (a. d. 1430), fol. 305-315 [ascrb. ] 
Be Schottenkloster 321 (a.d. 1433), fol. 122-131v [ascrb.] 


8) Sermo coram Edwardo III epinicius (1346) 


Inc. prol.: “Deo gracias qui semper triumphat, etc. Licet dominus 
noster rex habeat multos clericos...” 
Inc. sermo: “Nos karissimi nos est in factis armorum...” 
Oxford, Merton College 180 (membr. xiv), fol. 183v-188v 
Ed. H. A. Oberman and J. A. Weisheipl in AHDLMA, 25. 
(1958), 295-329, 


Uncertain 
1) Ars memorativa 


Inc.: “Ad artificialem memoriam duo requiruntur, scilicetlociscertus...” 
Expl.: “... in dextro pede vas aquaticum nobile et in sinistro pede pistes 
mirabiles.” 
*Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Mus., McClean Bequest 169, fol. 
254-356v 
London, B. M. Sloan 377 f (late xv), fol. 7v-8v 


2) Tractatus de predestinatione et libero arbitrio 


Inc.: “Quia plerosque sollicitat an predestinationis divine similiter et 
reprobationis aliqua causa in predestinato et reprobato con- 
sistat...” 

Vienna, Nat. Bibl. lat. 4306 (s. xiv-xv), fol. 90-105v 


3) Tractatus de incipit et desinit 


Inc.: “Ad maiorem et clariorem noticiam illorum terminorum ‘incipit’ 
et ‘desinit’ habendam...” 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2154 (s. xv), fol. 24-29v [ascrb.] 
« Vat. lat. 3066 (s. xv), fol. 50v-52ra [ascrb.] 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 183 


4) Tractatus insolubilium 


Inc.: “Quia a pluribus queratur facilius invenitur maxime [sic] si 
humilitas et concordia...” 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2154 (s. xv), fol. 22va-24ra [ascrb.] 


4, BREDON, SIMON 


Biogr. Merton College Fellow in 1330 (Mert. Rec. 3660) and still in 1341 
(Mert. Rec. 3712). Canon of Chichester by papal provision May 9, 1348. 
Died in 1372, having made his will at Battle Abbey, Sussex, dated Oct. 12, 
1368; the will was proved on April 18, 1372 (Will published by F. M. Po- 
wicke, The Medieval Books of Merton College, Oxford 1931, 82-86). See 
Emden 1, 257-8. 


Works 


1) Arsmetrica continens sentenciam arsmetrice Boecit 


Inc.: “Quantitatum alia continua, que magnitudo dicitur, alia discreta, 
que multitudo seu numerus nuncupatur...” 

Expl.: “... geometricalis proportio inter secundum et tercium termi- 
num repperitur. Explicit Ars Metrica Bredon.” 
Cambridge, Univ. Lib. Ee. III. 61 (s. xv), fol. 92v-101 

*Escorial, i. II. 6 (paper 1489), fol. 63-70 [ascrb. to Bradwar- 
dine] 
2) Arithmetrica theorica et practica 
Inc. prol.: “Scientia de numero ac virtute numeri...” 


Inc. pars I: “Numerus quem pro presenti...” 
Oxford, Bodl. 465 (SC 2459), (s. xv), fol. 18-194v 


3) Expositio super quedam capitula Almagesti Ptholomei 


Inc.: “Nunc superest ostendere quanta sit maxima declinatio ecliptice 
ab equinoctali...” 
Cambridge, Univ. Lib. Ee. IIT. 61 (s. xv), fol. 40-44 [imper- 
fect] 


4) Expositio super libro Theorica Planetarum 


Inc.: “Circulus eccentricus et egresse cuspidis et circulo egredientis...” 
Oxford, Digby 93 (SC 1694), (8. xv), fol. 37-49v [imperfect] 
« Digby 98 (SC 1699), (s. xv), fol. 132-145 


184 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


Uncertain 


1) De equationibus planetarum (to a. d. 1392) 


Inc. : “Tempus correspondens an/1392 /completus ultimo die decembris 
23 secund. et 12 primis annorum/et ultimodie decembris anno 
1393, 23 secund. et 13 primis etc. Tabule reductionis anno- 
rum extensa ad...” 
*Cambridge, Peterhouse 75 (s. xiv), fol. 1-50 


5. BuckincHam, THomas 


Biogr. Merton College Fellow in 1324 (Mert. Rec. 3654) and Master in 
Arts by 1331 (Cal. Pap. Let., 2, 365). It seems he left Merton in 1340. On 
March 25, 1346, he became Chancellor of Exeter; at that date he was al- 
ready a Master in Sacred Theology. He appears to have died by 1356, 
when a new Chancellor was appointed. See Emden, 1, 298-9. 


Works 


1) Tractatus de infinito tam logice quam philosophie naturali utilis 


Inc.: “Utrum aliquid sit actualiter infinitum...” 
Expl.: “... pars esset divisa a toto.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. F. 135 (a. 4. 1337), fol. 48-59 [according to 
Schum also ascribed to Guilelmus Collingham in margin] 


2) Questiones theologice (QQ. 88) 


Inc.: “Utrum credere prophetas de aliquo contingenter futuro sit 
meritorium creature. Primo tractavi de contingentia futuro- 
rum ...” 

Expl.: “... commorimur et consepelimur Christo.” 

Oxford, Merton College 143 (membr. xv), fol. 1-84 
« New College 134 (membr. xiv), fol. 324-438v 
Cf. M. Ὁ. Chenu, Studia Mediaevalia R. J. Martin, 229-241, 


3) Questiones super libros Sententiarum 


Inc.: “Utrum Deo frui sit summa merces cuiuslibet creature beate. 
Arguo primo, quod non. Quia tunc quam bona est creature 
rationali fruitio divina, tam mala esset ei carentia fruitionis 
divine ...” 

Inc.: “Queramus istam questionem in primo libro, viz. ex hoc quod 
scientia presigit in scito necessario imperfectionem impediat 
de Deo esse scientiam proprie dictam...” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 185 


*Bruges, de la Ville 192 (a. d. 1374), fol. 45-79v [“Utrum Deo 
frui...”] 

Florence, Laurenz, Conv. Soppr. 129 (s. xv), fol. 1-47v 

Paris, B. N. lat. 15888 (membr. xiv), fol. 6-64v 
« B.N. lat. 16400 (membr. xiv), fol. 2-109 

*Prague, Univ. 2357, XIII. F. 19 (paper a. d. 1394), fol. 127v- 
174 [“Utrum intellectus viatoris...”] 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 1089 (membr. xv), fol. 1-107v 
« Pal. lat. 329 (membr. xv), fol. 94-140 

Ed. Paris: J. Barbier 1505. Cf. Stegmiiller, RS, 1, n. 899; 
V. Doucet, Supplément (Quaracchi 1954), ibid., p. 85. 


6. BurLEY, WALTER 


Biogr. Born about 1275, probably in Yorkshire. He was already Master of 
Arts in 1301, and the earliest mention of him as Fellow of Merton College 
is in the Records of 1305 (Mert. Rec. 3634). Probably lectured in arts at 
Oxford until his departure for Paris in 1310. Master of Theology of the 
University of Paris, c. 1320-22. Remained at the University of Paris until 
early in 1327, when he was appointed envoy of Edward III to the Papal 
Court at Avignon. Burley received constant encouragement from Richard 
de Bury, to whom he dedicated numerous works. He was still alive on 
January 12, 1344. See Emden 1, 312-4; C.H. Lohr, Traditio, 24 (1968) 
171-187. 


Works 
1) Expositio super lib. Porphyrt 
a) Inc.: “Cum sit necessarium grisatorii, etc. Primo querende sunt 
cause huius libri quia secundum Aristotelem 1° Phis., tunc 
arbitramus unumquodque cognoscere quando cognoscimus 
eius causas...” 
Expl.: “... et sic patent differencie et conveniencie inter omnia 
universalia.” 


Cambridge, St. John’s College 100 (membr. early xiv), fol. 
47-49vb 


b) Inc.: “Quia de dictis in logica intendo quoddam compendium com- 
pilare dicende sunt primo tria circa logicam in communi...” 

Expl.: “... et species non continet genus. Comparaciones quinque 
universalium sunt tantum decem. Differencia est prior quam 

[sic] species quam [proprium]. Et hic finitur. Explicit liber 


186 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


Porphyrii secundum expositionem mag. Walteri Burley doc- 

toris evangelice veritatis.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 139/79 (membr. xiv), 
pp. 12-42 


c-e) See below nn. 5, 6, 7. 
2) Expositio super lib. Predicamentorum 


a) Inc.: “Equivoca dicuntur, etc. Intencio huius libri est determinare 
de decem predicamentis ciuus subiectum est ens...” 

Expl.: “... Alii sunt modi quod est habere, set hii qui sunt dicte 
sunt magis principalia.” 

Cambridge, St. John’s College 100 (membr. xiv), fol. 49vb- 
541} 

b) Inc.: “Equivoca dicuntur, etc. Impossibile est cognoscere totum 
partibus ignotis. Cum igitur demonstratio, que est finis lo- 
gici negocii, sit ex proposicionibus...” 

Expl.: “... set que sit ordinacio istorum predicamentorum et species 
et genera subalterna, in libro de sex principiis planius appare- 
bit.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 448/409 (membr. xiv), 
pp. 1-3la [anon.] 


« St. John’s College 100 (membr. xiv), fol. 55-66v 
[ascrb.] 
« Peterhouse 184 (membr. xv), fol. 171-189v 


London, B. M. Royal 12. F. XIX (membr. xiv), fol. 3-13v 
[second part only] 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 3048 (s. xv), fol. 21-88 


c-e) See below nn. 5, 6, 7. 
3) Expositio libri sex principiorum 
a) Inc.: “Forma est compositioni, etc. Iste liber intitulatur de sex 
principiis. Cum tamen sit de sex predicamentis, genre gene- 
ralissima sunt principia...” 

Expl.: “... fit minus nobile sive in substanciis sive in accidentibus; 
et oppositio modo est de corrupcione. Et in hoc [finitur] liber 
sex principiorum.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 139/79 (membr. XIV), 
page 131-153 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 9341 (s. xiv-xv), fol. 77-92 
b) Inc.: “Quamvis Aristoteles in libro Predicamentorum sufficienter 
quantum est de intencione logici determinavit, tamen ut faci- 
lius et evidencius habetur cognicio...” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 187 


Expl.: “... generatur minus nobile sive in substanciis sive in acci- 
dentibus. Et opposito modo est de corrupcione. In hac com- 
pletur intencio Poretani in sex principtis.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 448/409 (membr. xiv) 
pp. 57-87b [anon]. 
« Peterhouse 184 (membr. xv), fol. 156v-171 [ascrb.] 
Olean, St. Bonaventure, N. Y., Univ. 2 (paperxv), fol. 1-22ra 
[ascrb.] 


c) Expositio vetus 


Inc.: “Iste liber intitulatur de sex principiis. Cum tamen sit de sex 
predicamentis; genera enim generalissima est sunt principia 
et sunt predicamenta...” 

Expl.: “... et cum aer generatur ex igne, est generacio secundum quid 
respectiva. Ista satis patent ex 1° De gen., et hoc finitur liber 
sex principiorum. Explicit exposicio Burley super librum sex 
principiorum, que dicitur exposicio vetus.” 

London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 35-43 
« Lambeth Pal. 143 (s. xv), fol. 141-150 

d) Expositio nova 

Inc. : “Quamvis Aristoteles in libro Predicamentorum sufficienter quan- 
tum est de intencione logici determinavit, tamen ut facilius 
et evidencius habeatur cognicio predicamentorum Gilbertus 
Porretanus hunc librum composuit...” 

Expl.: “... et quando ex magis nobili fit minus nobile est generacio 
secundum quid respectiva. Unde cum ignis generetur ex 
aere est generacio simplex absoluta; et cum aer generatur 
ex igne est generacio secundum quid respectiva; ista satis 
patent ex 1° De gen. Explicit exposicio Burley super librum 
sex principiorum. ἢ 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 43v-55v 

e) (written after leaving Paris, i. e., after 1327) 


Inc.: “Iste est liber qui intitulatur de sex principiis. Cum tamen sit de 
sex predicamentis. Genera enim generalissima sunt principia 
et predicamenta... Et istam opinionem tenui Parisius et eam 
declaravi in primo tractatu de formis accidentalibus...” 

Expl.: “... Unde cum ignis generatur ex aere est generacio simplex ab- 
soluta, et cum aer generatur ex igne est generacio secundum 
quid respectiva.” 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 2147 (s. xv), fol. 81-102 


f-g) See below nn. 6, 7. 


188 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


4) Expositio super lib. Peryermenias 


a) Questiones quinque date a mag. Waltero de Burley super librum Peryarme- 
nias a. d. 1301 
Inc. : “Queritur utrum vox primo significet rem...” 
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 668* /645 (membr. xiv) 
fol. 60-76 


b) Inc.: “Primum oportet constituere, etc. Iste liber qui intitulatur 
liber periarmenias est de interpretatione, quia periarmenias 
dicitur a peri quod est de et armeneias quod est interpreta- 
tio...” 

Cambridge, St. John’s College 100 (membr. xiv), fol. 54r-54v 
[incomplete] 


c) Inc.: “Primum oportet, etc. Cum cognicio sillogismi sit finis logice 
et cognicio partis precedit cognicionem totius et sillogismus 
habet partes propinquas et remotas...” 

Expl.: “... sunt magis quam que enunciant minus contrario quam 
illa que enunciant contraria de eadem. Explicit tractatus 
libri peryarmenyas datus a mag. Waltero de Burley.” 
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 448/409 (membr. xiv) 

pp. 32-56b 
« Gonville & Caius College 139/79 (membr. xiv), 
pp. 153-164 [incomplete] 
« St. John’s College 100 (membr. xiv), fol. 67- 
73rb 
London, B. M. Royal 12. F. XIX (membr. xiv), fol. 14-23ra 


d) See below, n. 7. 


5) Expositio in Aristotelis librum Priorem [sic] et Predicam. 
Inc.: “Questio est utrum logica sit necessaria ad alias sciencias...” 


Expl.: “... Explicit scriptum libre prior [sic] et Pred. Arist. per mag. 
Burleum, preclarissimum famosum doctorem in logica necnon 
in naturali philosophia.” 

*Padua, Antoniana, Scaff. XVIII. 391 (s. xv), fol. 1-89 


6) Questiones de arte vetere: De universalibus, de predicamentis et de sex principiis 


Inc.: “Circa universalia sunt dubitaciones notande...” 
Expl.: “... Explicit Burleus super Arte Veteri per me Joannem de Lova- 
nio Alemano, an. 1448.” 
*Cambridge, Gonville & Caius 139 (s. xiv), fol 1-11 [inc. mutil.] 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 189 


*London, Lambeth 70 (s. xiv), fol. 110-114 [incomplete] 
Padua, Antoniana, XVIII. 402 (s. xv), fol. 1-91 
*Poznan, Bibl. Seminar. 46 (a. 1459), p. 241-251. 
*Wroclaw, Bibl. Univ. (fond. de Milich) 4. 9423 (8. xv), fol. 
394v-402. 


7) Expositio super artem Veterem, a. d. 1337 


Inc.: “Quia de dictis in logica quoddam compendium intendo com- 
pilare... Circa librum predicamentorum est sciendum quod... 
Quamvis Aristoteles in libro Predicamentorum sufficienter... 
Liber Peryarmenias quem ad presens intendimus exponere...” 

Expl.: “... _Istam tamen materiam alibi diffusius pertractavi, et in hoc 
finitur secundus liber peryarmenias. Completa est hec expo- 
sitio quinta die mensis Augusti anno domini millesimo CCC 
tricesimo septimo et anno etatis exponentis sexagesima secun- 
do.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius 139/79 (membr. xiv), fol. 12-131 
Florence, Laurenz, Ashburnh. 171 (a. d. 1443), fol. 1-10 [in- 
compl.] 
« Laurenz. Ashburnh. 1145 (a. d. 1458-60), fol. 2-144v 
« Laurenz. Plaut. 71, cod. 25 (a. d. 1427), fol. 1-72v 
London, Lambeth Palace 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-84 
« Lambeth Palace 143 (s. xv), fol. 151-185 [Periher.] 
« B. M. Royal 12. B. XIX (s. xv), fol. 19-34v [Porph.] 
Naples, Naz. Cent. lat. VIII. E. 15 (a. d. 1463), [0]. 1-125v 
« Naz. Cent. lat. VIII. E. 1 (s. xv), fol. 1-76v [incompl.] 
« Naz. Cent. lat. VIII. G. 72 (s. xv), fol. 31-130v 
ἘΠ « Bibl. dell’? Oratorio, cod. Pil. XVI, n. X 
Oxford, Bodl. 643 (SCG 2256), (s. xiv), fol. 1-69 
« Canon. Misc. 180 (s. xv), fol. 1-42 
« Canon. Misc. 460 (s. xv), fol. 1-109 
« Magdalen College 47 (membr. xv), fol.37v-54 [Porp.] 
« Magdalen College 146 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-83 
Rome, Angelica 1498 (V. 3. 5), (a. d. 1442), fol. 1-119 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-87 


« Vat. lat. 2147 (s. xv), fol. 1-102v 
« Vat. lat. 2148 (s. xv), fol. 1-45v [Periher.] 
« Vat. lat. 3048 (5. xv), fol. 1-11|ν 


*Wroclaw, Bibl. Univ. IV. Q, 3 (s. xv), fol. 102-111 [Porph.] 
*Wroclaw, Bibl. Univ. IV. Q. 25 (s. xv), fol. 13-142v 
Ed. Venice 1481, 1497, 1519. 


190 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


8) Commenta super II Priorum Analyticorum (? Kilwardby) 


Inc.: “Cum omnis scientia erit inquisitiva...” 
Expl. : “... quod non est inconveniens.” 


*Erfurt, Amplon. Ὁ. 276 (a. d. 1295-1333), fol. 63-97v 


9) Expositio super libros duos Posteriorum Analyticorum 


a) Inc.: “Omnis doctrina, etc. Secundum Philosophum in moralibus 
in quibuscumque actibus nostris accidit rectitudo et pecca- 
tum, ideo necessario indigemus arte...” 

Expl: “... et hoc quando statim cognoscitur, quia sic est de omnibus 
singularibus sicut est de uno singulari. Explicit exposicio mag. 
Walteri de Burley super librum posteriorum Aristotelis.” 
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 448/409 (membr. xiv), 

pp. 117a-171b [anon.] 
*Cracow, Bibl. Jagellon. 2229 (s. xv), fol. 114-149v 
London, B. M. Royal 12. B. XIX (s. xv), fol. 244-301 


« Lambeth Palace 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 149-169 
*Wroclaw, Bibl. Univ. (fond. de Milich) 13. 7809 (s. xv), fol. 
289-314 


Ed. Venice: per mag. Otinum Papiensem 1497 


b) Uncertain 
Inc.: “Omnis cognitio nostra vel est sensitiva vel intellectiva...” 
Expl.: “... et hoc patet alibi in isto capitulo.” 
Ed. Venice 1514, fol. 40v-44v (with comm. of Grosseteste) 


C) Questiones super librum Posteriorum (10 qq.) 

Inc. :“Queritur utrum aliquis posset adquirere aliquam scienciam 
de novo. Videtur quod non per argumentum ilorum qui 
negabant scientiam...” 

Expl.: “... per quod aliquid aliud debet determinari. Explicit 
questiones super librum posteriorum date a domino Waltero 
de Burley.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 668*/645 (early xiv), 
fol. 119v-132v 


10) Expositio super libros Topicorum 
Inc.: “Ut de dicendis in hoc opere cognicio distinctior habetur, dis- 
tinguam librum istum totalem...” 
Expl.: “... sed pocius immediate et hoc planius determinari habet in 
fine posteriorum. Expliciunt notule octavi libri topicorum 


Aristotelis.” 
London, Lambeth Palace 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 170-268va 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 191 


Oxford, Merton College 295 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-92 [lib. I-VIT] 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 113-204 
*Wroclaw, Bibl. Univ. IV. Q, 3 (s. xv), fol. 124-174v 


11) Expositio super librum Elenchorum 


a) Inc.: “De sophisticis autem elenchis, etc. Modi arguendi sunt duo 
ut ait Philosophus 1° Elencorum: unus est secundum diccio- 
nem, alius extra diccionem...”! 

Expl.: “... et eodem modo est hec falsa: omnia que non vident et 
sunt apta nata videre sunt ceca. Explicit lib. elenchorum 
W. Burley.” 
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 448/409 (membr. xiv), 
pp. 95b-115a [Hic explicit quidam tractatus qui vocatur 
modus arguendi.] 
London, Lambeth Palace 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 134vb-144ra 


b) Questiones libri Elenchorum 


Inc.: “De sophisticis autem elenchis etc. Queratur utrum de sillo- 
gismo sophistico est sciencia. Quod non...” 
Expl.: “... esse nisi inter accionem et passionem. Expliciunt ques- 
tiones date super librum elencorum.” 
Cambridge, St. John’s College 100 (membr. early xiv), fol. 
153-162va 


12) Suppositiones 


Inc.: “Eorum que dicuntur, quedam dicuntur cum complexione et 
quedam dicuntur sine complexione...” 
Expl.: “... ideo non valet quia arguit a pluribus determinatis ad unum 
determinatum. Expliciunt suppositiones date a mag. W. de 
Bourl[ey].” 
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 434/434 (membr. xiv), 
fol. 13-19 
London, B. M. Royal 12. F. XIX (membr. xiv), fol. 130-133v 
13) De puritate artis logicae 
a) shorter and earlier version: 
Inc.: “Ut iuvenes in quolibet problemate disputantes possint esse 
exercitati et velociter obviantes...” 
Expl.: “... possunt categorematice vel syncategorematice accipi. 
Explicit burleus minor.” 
*Los Angeles, Hoose Library 6 (s. xiv), fol. 77-88 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 3066 (a. d. 1347-49), fol. 26-33v 
Ed. P. Boehner, Olean, St. Bonaventure, N. Y. 1955 


192 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


b) longer version, after 1324: 
Inc.: “Suppositis significatis terminorum incomplexorum, in hoc 
tractatu intendo perscrutari...” 
Expl.: “... eodem modo est syllogizandum hic, sicut in simplicibus 
categoricis de inesse.” 
*Bruges, de la Ville 501 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-69v 
*Erfurt, Amplon. F. 120 (8. xiv), fol. 74-98v 
* «  Amplon. Q. 259 (a. d. 1340), fol. 159-208 
* «  Amplon. Q. 291 (s. xiv), fol. 51-64v 
* « Amplon. O. 67 (a. d. 1329), fol. 123v-134 [extracts] 
Florence, Laurenz. 5. Croce, Plut. XII, sin. cod. 2 (membr. 
xiv), fol. 167-203 
London, Lambeth Palace 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 85-109v 
Munich, Clm. 1060 (a. d. 1347), fol. 97v-130v 
Paris, B. N. lat. 16130 (s. xiv), fol. 80-110v 
*Treviso, Bibl. Comm. 377 (membr. xv), fol. 97-121v [mutil. 
at end; AL, 1078] 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (a. d. 1397), fol. 204v-234v 


« Vat. lat. 3066 (a. d. 1349), fol. 34-50 
Vienna, Dominikanerkloster 160/130 (member. xiv), fol. 61- 
74ν 


*Venice, S. Marco lat. 261 (8. xiv), fol. 31-44 
Ed. P. Boehner, Olean, St. Bonaventure, N. Y. 1955 


14) Notabilia de logicis. See. A. Maier, Ausgehendes Mittelalter 1, 230-234. 
i) Tractatus de relativis 

Inc.: “Circa relativa est sciendum quod relativum est duplex in 
genere, scilicet relativum grammaticale et relativam logicum 
seu reale...” 

Expl.: “... prout descendit ab hoc adiectivo hic et hec animalis et 
hoc animale.” 
London, Lambeth Palace 70 (membr, xiv), fol. 114ra-115ra 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 248-249 


ii) Tractatus de abstractis 
Inc.: “Sed dubium est quid huiusmodi abstracta humanitas et 
animalitas significant, utrum formam tantum vel aggre- 
gatum....” 
Expl.: “... ponentes quod affirmatio eiusdem de se est necessaria.” 
London, Lambeth Palace 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 115ra-rb 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 249r-v 


iii) 


iv 


ws 


< 
wm 


vi 


we 


vii) 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 193 


De divisione entis 
Inc.: “Circa divisionem entis per se in decem predicamenta...” 
Expl.: “... et sic antichristus dicitur esse nichil, eodem modo est de 


non ente.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 115va-116ra 
« Lambeth Pal. 143 (s. xiv), fol. 139r-v 


Oxford, All Souls College 85 (membr. 1428), fol. 131-132 
« Bodl. Add. A. 370 (s. xv), fol. 173-175 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 249v-250 
Ed. H. Shapiro, Manuscripta 7 (1963), 105-108. 

De finito et infimto 

Inc.: “Circa finitum et infinitum est sciendum quod finitum et in- 
finitum quantitati conveniunt...” 

Expl.: “... iste terminus infinita potest teneri categorice vel sinca- 
tegorice.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 116va-vb 
Oxford, All Souls Gollege 85 (membr. 1428), fol. 171rb-va 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 250v 


De toto et parte 

Inc.: “Intelligendum quod pars et totum multipliciter accipiuntur. 
Pars enim accipitur pro partibus essencialibus...” 

Expl.: “... nisi corrupto subiecto, nec falsa nisi manente subiecto.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 116ra-va 
Oxford, All Souls College 85 (membr. xv), fol. 169r-v 

« Bodl. Add. A. 370 (s. xv), fol. 175-176 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 250r-v 


Tractatus de sensibus 

Inc.: “Nota quod in homine sunt quinque sensus interiores sicut 
exteriores...” 

Expl.: “... causantium illas qualitates et econtra experimentum.” 
Cambridge, Univ. lib. Hh. IV. 13 (s. xv), fol. 58v-60 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 116vb-117vb 

« Lambeth Pal. 143 (s. xiv), fol. 139v-140v 

« B. M. Royal 12. B. XIX (s.xv), fol. 301v-304 
Oxford, Oriel College 15 (membr. xv), fol. 97v-99 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 246-247 

« Vat. lat. 2151 (membr. xv), fol. 117-119 


De duobus primis principiis 
Inc.: “Notandum quod tantum sunt duo principia prima substancie 
secundum rem, scilicet materia et forma...” 


194 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


Expl.: “... per operacionem artis applicantis artificialiter partes 
domus ad invicem.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 117vb-118ra 
« Lambeth Pal. 143 (s. xv), fol. 150va-b 
Oxford, All Souls College 85 (membr. xv), fol. 169vb-17Irb 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 247r-v 
Ed. H. Shapiro, Manuscripta 6 (1962), 96-98. 


viii) De qualitatibus 


a 


Inc.: “Sciendum quod quatuor sunt species qualitatis...” 

Expl.: “... iracundia ex aliquo displicibili, et ita de aliis.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 118va-119rb 
Oxford, Bodl. Add. A. 370 (5. xv), fol. 171v-173 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 245r-v 
Ed. H. ἃ C. Shapiro, Franziskanische Studien,45 (1963), 257-260. 

ix) De tribus in toto universo per se agentibus 

Inc.: “Notandum est quod in universo tria sunt agencia per se, 
scilicet Deus, natura et ars...” 

Expl.: “... per operacionem artis applicantis artificialiter partes 
domus adinvicem.” 

London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 118ra-va 

Oxford, All Souls College 85 (membr. xv), fol. 170va-171rb 
«  Bodl. Add. A. 370 (s. xv), fol. 168-169v 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 247va-248ra 

Ed. H. Shapiro, Medievalia et Humanistica, 15 (1963) 88-90. 

x) De divisione potentie in activam et passivam 

Inc.: “Sciendum quod duplex est potencia, scilicet activa et passiva. 
Et ponatur...” 

Expl.: “... passo super quod dominatur de necessitate agit.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 119rb-va 
Oxford, Bod]. Add. A. 370 (8. xv), fol. 176v-177 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 245v-246 
Ed. H. Shapiro & F. Scott, Modern Schoolman, 43 (1966) 180-182 

De diffinitione sive de modo dif finiendi 

Inc.: “Sciendum quod duplex est modus diffiniendi, scilicet compo- 
sicionis et divisionis...” 

Expl.: “... sed loco istius ponitur eius diffinicio.” 

London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 119va-vb 

Naples, Bibl. Naz. VIII. F. 10 (a. d. 1426), fol. 96v-106v 

Oxford, Magdalen College 146 (membr. xiv), fol. 46v-49 
« Bodl. Add. A. 370 (s. xv), fol. 170-171 


ES 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 195 


Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 244v-245 
Ed. H. Shapiro & F. Scott, Med. Studies, 27 (1965), 337-340. 


15) De probationtbus 
Inc.: “Quoniam innata est nobis via a communibus...” 


Expl.: “... sed totum ratione partis.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 276 (a. d. 1295-1333), fol. 6-19v 


16) De exclusivis 
Inc.: “Circa diccionem exclusivas est sciendum quod diccio exclusiva 
addita subiecto removet predicatum ab appositis subiecti...” 
Expl.: “... aliud quam Plato ex quo non sequitur quod Sortes non 
differe a Cathone. Expliciunt exclusive mag. W. de Burleye.” 
London, B. M. Royal 12. F. XIX (membr. xiv), fol. 123-126 


17) De exceptiors 
Inc.: “Hoc signum ‘preter’ aliquando tenetur exceptive, aliquando 


diminutive...” 

Expl.: “... sed subiectum in comparacione ad actum ideo non oportet 
consequenciam valere. Expliciunt exceptive mag. W. de 
Burl.” 


London, B. M. Royal 12. F. XIX (membr. xiv), fol. 126v-129v 


18) De syncategorematibus 
Inc.: “Queritur de obliquis utrum possit fieri syllogismus...” 
Expl.: “... consequentias necessarias, licet non syllogizatis.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 276 (s. xiv), fol. 19v-2lv 


19) De consequentis 
a) Inc.: “Quia in sophismatibus probandis et improbandis conse- 
quentiis utimur, et ideo circa natura consequentiarum multa 
oportet scire...” 

Expl.: “... non fit una obiectio tantum [sed] plures diverse. 
Expliciunt consequentie edite a mag. Gualtero de burley.” 
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 434/434 (membr. xiv). 

fol. 1-10 
Florence, Laurenz. Plut. XII, sin. cod. 2 (membr. xiv), fol. 
203v-212 
b) Inc.: “Consequenciarum quedam simplex quedam ut nunc. Con- 
sequentia simplex est illa que tenet pro omni...” 

Expl.: “... quia substantia predicatur de homine, et ideo hec est 
vera, homo est species. Et sic est finis. Expliciunt conse- 
quencie a ven. arcium doc. mag. Burley composite.” 


Vatican, Vat. lat. 3065 (8. xv), fol. 39vb-43rb 


196 J. A. WEISHFIPL 


20) De obligationibus 


a) Inc.: “In disputacione dialectica due sunt partes, scilicet opponens 

et respondens. Opus autem opponentis...” 
Expl.: “... dummodo non fit una obiectio tantum, sed plures et’ 

diverse. Explicit optimus tractatus de obligacionibus datus 
a mag. Waltero de Burleye anno domini Millesimo trecente- 
simo secundo.” 
London, B. M. Royal 12. F. XIX (membr. xiv), fol. 138-148 
Venice, S. Marco, Z. lat. 301 (1576), (5. xiv), fol. 47-57v 


b) Inc.: “Obligacio secundum quod nos utimur hoc nomine in sophis- 
matibus est prefixio...” 
Expl.: “... ad omnia enim respondendum est dubie. Expliciunt 
obligaciones date a mag. Galtero Burley.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Q, 259 (a. d. 1340), fol. 209-214v 
Paris, B. N. lat. 16130 (membr. xiv), fol. 110v-114 
Venice, 5. Marco, Z. lat. 302 (1873), (5. xiv), fol. 151-240 


c) Inc.: “Cum ars obligatoria sit...” 
Expl.: “... tu es Rome. Explicit obligaciones.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. O. 76 (s. xiv), fol. 34v-36 


21) De insolubilibus 


Inc.: “Circa insolubilia queritur duo: primo circa insolubile simplex, 
secundo circa insolubile compositum...” 

Expl.: “... sed sufficit veritas huius partis et sic de insolubilibus dicta 
sufficiant. Expliciunt insolubilia mag. Waltheri Wurley, 
Anglici.” 

London, B. M. Royal 12. F. XIX (membr. xiv), fol. 133v-138 

Paris, B. N. lat. 16621 (s. xiv), fol. 243-247v [Expliciunt so- 
phismata insolubilia mag. Galtheri de Burley anglici mag. 
in theologia.] 

Vienna, Dominikanerkloster 160/130 (membr. xiv), fol. 60r-v 
and 125va-126vb 


22) De sophismatibus cum sua sophisteria 


Inc.: “Circa signa universalia quatuor proponimus inquirere...” 
Expl.: “... in se duo contradictione opposita.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 276 (s. xiv), fol. 22-62 
*Rome, 8. Isidoro 1/10, fol. 2 ff. [ascr. “Bonaventura”] 
Venice, S. Marco, Z. lat. 302 (1873), fol. 1-50 [Burley, “Flores 
totius logice”] 
Ed. 5. Bonaventurae, Opera Omnia, Bassani 1767, col. 467 ff. 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 197 


23) Tractatus de universalibus realibus 


Inc.: “Circa universalia sunt dubitationes non pauce. Prima utrum 
universalia existant in rerum natura...” 
Expl.: “... representantem chimeram.” 
Cambridge, Gonville & Cauis College 139/79 (membr. xiv), 
fol. 1-11 [begin. imperfect] 
London, Lambeth Palace 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 110-113v 
Naples, Bibl. Naz. lat. VIII. E. 1 (s. xv), fol. 11v-16 
Oxford, Bodl. Add. A. 370 (SC 29621), (5. xv), fol. 207-216v 
ἘΠ « Univ. College 120 (membr. xiv) 
« Magdalen College 146 (membr. xiv), fol. 43-46v 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2151 (s. xv), fol. 119-126v 
« Vat. lat. 3048 (s. xv), fol. 121-130 
Vienna, Dominikanerkloster 14/14 (s. xiv), fol. 40-46 
Ed. Venice 1492-3 [GW 5770] 


24) Expositio librorum Phystcorum 


a) early version before 1316: 

Inc.: “Quoniam autem intelligere, etc. Iste liber habet duas par- 
tesa” 

Expl.: “... nec in corpore, sed etiam indivisibilis et impartibilis, 
nullam habens magnitudinem. Explicit exposicio omnium 
librorum phisicorum edita a mag. Waltero de Burley cum 
questionibus optime disputatis.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 448/409 (membr. xiv), 
pp. 172-543b 
« St. John’s College 100 (membr. xiv), fol. 76-85v 
[frag. from lib. V, comm. 9 = Caius Coll. MS, 
pp- 361a-376b] 


b) final version, begun after 1324: 

Inc.: “Quoniam quidem intelligere, etc. Aristoteles determinaturus 
de rebus naturalibus...” 

Expl.: “... virtutem resistivam mobilem non esset aliqua proportio, 
et hic finitur exposicio super totum librum Physicorum.” 
Basel, Univ. Bibl. F. II. 30 (membr. xiv), fol. 3 ff. 

*Cesena, Bibl. Malatest. 5. [X. 3 (s. xiv), fol. 1 ff 
*Erfurt, Amplon. F. 295 (s. xiv), fol. 145 ff. [anon., I-VI] 
Florence, Naz. Cent., Conv. Soppr. D. 1. 1362 (a. d. 1364), 
fol. 15-147 
« Naz. Cent., Conv. Soppr. A. 1. 1361 (a. d. 1465), fol. 
1-228v 


198 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-53va [qq. ex- 
tracted from comm.] 

Naples, Bibl. Naz. VIII. E. 35 (5. xv), fol. 1-175v [incomplete] 
« Bibl. Naz. VIII. E. 47 (a. d. 1446), fol. 1-303v 
*New York, Plimpton Libr. 19 (a. d. 1400), fol. 1-235 [in- 

complete] 
Oxford, All Souls College 86 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-199 
« Balliol College 91 (membr. xiv), fol. 5-246 
Padua, Antoniana, XVI, n. 365 (a. d. 1447), fol. 1-244 
« Antoniana, XVI, n. 369 (s. xv), fol. 1-263 
* « Antoniana, XVI, n. 391 (5. xv) 
Paris, B. N. lat. 6528 (5. xv) 
Rome, Angelica 226 (C. 2. 3), (a. d. 1442), fol. 1-174 [lib. 
I-IV] 
«  Casanatense 267 (5. xiv), fol. 86-89 [frag. lib. IIT] 
*Seville, Columbina 5. 1. 13 [dubia super libros Physicorum] 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2149 (5. xiv), fol. 1-122 [first 6 bks.] 
« Vat. lat. 2150 (s. xiv), fol. 1-223 [incomplete at 
beginning of bk. VIT] 
« Vat. lat. 4591 (a. d. 1411), fol. 1 ff. 

*Venice, 8. Marco, Z. lat. 255 (5. xv), fol. 1-325 

Vienna, Nat. Bibl. lat. 5267 (s. xv), fol. 1-311 

Ed. Venice 1482, 1491, 1501 

6) Questiones super libros Physicorum (1324) 

*Basel, Univ. Bibl. F. V. 12 [incompl. cf. 5. H. Thomson, Mitt. 

Inst. Oster. Gesch. 62 (1954), 390-405] 


d) Sententia super libris Physicorum 
Inc.: “Philosophia secundum definitionem vocis sic definitur...” 
Expl.: “... ens ipsum est motor efficiens.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 312 (before 1323), fol. 1-14 
6) Quaedam quaestiones naturales 
Inc.: “Prima questio est super hoc quod dicit Aristoteles in lib. 
Posteriorum quod questio quia est...” 
Expl.: “... per hoc quod videtur, idest per formam.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Ὁ. 290 (5. xiv), fol. 57-62 


25) Questio de duratione 


Inc.: “Utrum per alicam potenciam alica creatura possit durare per 
Ρ Ρ ate 
solum instans. Et arguitur quod non primo sic: quia inter 
adquisicionem et deperdicionem...” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 199 


Expl.: “... Ad decimum dico ad minorem quod res in potencia de 
potencia obiectiva habet esse eternum, sed non de potencia 
subiectiva, et sic non valet. Explicit questio Galterie burley.” 
Rome, Casanatense 267 (s. xiv), fol. 89-91lv 

26) De principiis naturalibus 
Inc.: “Sicut fructus est ultimum quod expectatur de arbore...” 
Expl.: “... et ideo in talibus dictus quod est processus in infinitum. Ex- 
plicit tractatus m. Walteri Burley de principiis naturalibus.” 
*Madrid, Bibl. de Palacio 2092, fol. 190-194v 
*Munich, Clm 3548 

Oxford, Balliol College 93 (membr. xiv), fol. 7-11 
Ἐκ Bodl. Digby 172 (SC 1725) 


27) Expositio de Celo et Mundo 


Incl.: “In hoc libro qui dicitur de celo et mundo sunt quedam commu- 
nia scienda...” 

Expl.: “... quam corpus resistens, tunc corpus resistens dividitur et fit 
motus deorsum. Explicit expositio W. Burley super libros 
de celo et mundo.” 

London, Lambeth Palace 74 (membr. 1390), fol. 110-15lv 
[anon.] 

Oxford, All Souls College 86 (membr. xiv), fol. 222v-256 
« Magdalen College 63 (membr. xv), fol. 2-58 [imperf. 
at end] 
« St. John’s College 113 (membr. xiv), fol. 62-120v 
[anon.] 


28) Expositio super de Generatione et Corruptione 


a) Inc.: “In prohemio huius libri proponit Philosophus suam intencio- 
nem, dicens quod intendit' in hoc libro determinare causas 
universales...” 

Expl.: “... nam quod est corruptum non redit idem in numero. Et 
in hoc terminatur liber de gen. Explicit exposicio Walteri 
Burley super de gen. et corrup.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 448 (5. xiv-xv), fol. 544- 
555 [anon. incompl.] 

London, Lambeth Palace 74 (membr. 1390), fol. 9-30ra [anon.] 

Oxford, All Souls College 86 (membr. xiv), fol. 199v-212 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 2151 (s. xiv), fol. 149-171 


b) Inc.: “De generatione autem et corruptione, etc. Inquirit in hoc 
libro de generabili in communi...” 


200 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


Expl.: “... tetigit hoc quod est motivum.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 312 (before 1323), fol. 14-20v 


29) Expositio super Metheorum libros quatuor brevissime 


Inc.: “De primis ergo causis, etc. Liber metheorum dicitur quasi liber 
metheorum logicorum. Et dicitur...” 

Expl.: “... formam alicuius rei tunc scimus principia eius et motum per 
Aristotelem. Explicit exposicio m. Walteri Burley super 4 li- 
bros metheorum secundum litteram brevis et utilis.” 
Cambridge, Trinity College 1109 (membr. xiv), fol. 395-411 
London, Gray’s Inn 2 (s. xiv), fol. 172-176v 
Oxford, Balliol College 93 (membr. xiv), fol. 91v-96 

« Digby 98 (s. xv), fol. 49-6lv 
« Bodl. Add. A. 370 (s. xv), fol. 191-203 


oo 
Θ 
= 


Tractatus de planetis et eorum virtute 


Inc.: “Sciendum si quis nascatur in aliqua hora diei in qua...” 
Expl.: “... si fecerit prima digna a bono divino, suscipiet scilicet vitam 
eternam. Explicit tract. de planetis et eorum virtute.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 147vb-148va 
[anon.] 
« Lambeth Pal. 74 (membr. 1390), fol. 8va-b [anon.] 


31) Problemata Aristotelis 


Prol.: “Felix qui poterit causas, etc. Felicitas quandoque sive beati- 
tudo est summum bonum...” 
Inc. expos.: “Abstinencia: quare labor et abstinencia sunt salubres...” 
Expl.: “... Zephirus, vere ventus. Expliciunt abbreviacio libri prob- 
lematum Aristotelis secundum ordinem alphabeti laborata 
per Walterum Burley, doctorem in theologia, Universitatis 
Oxon.” 
Oxford, Digby 206 (s. xiv), fol. 96-129 
« Magdalen College 65 (s. xv), fol. 1-58 


32) Expositio librorum De Anima 


a) Inc.: “In prohemio primo probat necessitatem sciencie de anima...” 
Expl.: “... scilicet vegitabilem et sensibilem.” 


*Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 312 (before 1323), fol. 20v-28 


b) Questiones super III De anima 


Inc.: “Queritur utrum anima sit substancia simplex vel composita. 
Et videtur composita...” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 201 


Expl.: ...quod ordinat aliquod ad opus hic actio vel operacio.” 
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius 668*/645 (membr. early xiv), 
fol. 150-173 [first two books ascr. to‘mag. Adam de burely’ 
in upper margin (cf. Emden 1, 311); third to ‘Walterus 
de Burley’] 


c) Expositio 
Inc.: “Bonorum honorabilium, etc. Sicut dicit Themistius primo 
huius, que sunt perfecciora...” 


Expl.: “... qui facuint alimentum dulce vel amarum. Explicit ex- 
positio super libros de anima secundum mag. Walterum de 


Burley.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 74 (membr. 1390), fol. 33-109v 
« Lambeth Pal. 143 (s. xv), fol. 76-138 


Oxford, Balliol College 92 (membr. xiv), fol. 9-200 
« Oriel College 12 (membr. xv), fol. 2-69v 
« Magdalen College 146 (membr. xiv), fol. 123-130 
[imperf.] 
Vatican, Ottobon. lat. 2165 (membr. xiv), fol. 48v-63v 
« Vat. lat. 2151 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-88 


33) Tractatus de potentiis animae 


Inc.: “Ut dicit Philosophus 2° de anima, potenciarum anime quibus- 
dam animatis...” 

Expl.: “... appetitus sensitivus in irrascibilem et concupiscibilem. Ex- 
plicit tractatus de potenciis anime compilatus ab eximio doc- 
tore mag. Galtero Burleo.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 668* [645 (membr. xiv), 
fol. 13v-18v [‘notabilia’] 
« University Libr. Dd. 12. 46 (s. xv), fol. 149-168 
*Durham, Bibl. Cathed. V. 11. 5 (item 7; cat. p. 146) 
Florence, Laurenz. Plut 83, cod. 29 (s. xv), fol. 9-20 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol 120r-124rb 


« Lambeth Pal. 74 (membr. 1391), fol. 190-197 [‘no- 
tabilia’] 
« B. M. Royal 12. B. XTX (s. xv), fol. 46-55v 
* « B. M. Add. 18630 (s. xv), fol. 76-84 
*Munich, Clm. 8950 (s. xv), fol. 292-310 
« Clm. 19680 (a. d. 1376), fol. 169-181 
ἘΠ « Clm. 26889 (s. xv), fol. 1-20 


*Naples, Bibl. Naz. lat. VII. D. 4 (s. xv), fol. 135-144 
« Bibl. Naz. lat. VIII. F. 10 (a. d. 1426), fol. 80v-96 


202 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


Oxford, All Souls College 85 (membr. 1428), fol. 87-95 
« All Souls College 87 (a. d. 1473), fol. 222-236 [anon. ] 
« Balliol College 93 (membr. xiv), fol. 3-6v [mutil.] 
« Corpus Christi College 293 (membr. xiv), fol. 110- 


« Magdalen College 47 (membr. xv), fol. 54v-67 

« Magdalen College 146 (membr. xiv), fol. 107-112 
« Bodl. Add. A. 370 (s. xv), fol. 177-190 

« Canon. Misc. 104 (s. xv), fol. 117-126 

Digby 104 (s. xv), fol. 104-109 

« Digby 172 (s. xv), fol. 1-6 

« Rawl. C. 677 (a. d. 1428), fol. 159-166 

*Perugia, Bibl. Comm. 580 (a. d. 1450), fol. 65-74 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 901 (membr. xiv), fol. 163-168v 


Χ * * χΧ 
& 


« Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 252v-256v 
« Vat. lat. 2151 (s. xv), fol. 252v-256v 

« Borghese 431, fol. 101v-107 

« Ottob. lat. 1816, fol. 17-21 


« Urb. lat. 218 (s. xv), fol. 246-252 
Venice, 5. Marco, lat. VI. 160 (2816) (a. 4. 1443), fol.67-73 
Worcester, Bibl. Cathed. F. 86 (s. xv), fol. 1-8v 


34) Expositio de sensu et sensato 


Inc.: “Sciencia de anima in tres partes...” 
Expl.: “... Explicit tractatus libri de sensu et sensato datus a mag. 
Waltero Burley.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 74 (membr. 1390), fol. 175-184vb 
Oxford, Magdalen College 146 (membr. xiv), fol. 95-99 
« Oriel College 12 (membr. xv), fol. 86v-97v 


35) LExpositio de memoria et reminiscentia 


Inc.: “In prohemio huius libri qui durat ibi usque...” 
Expl.: “... propter hoc de facili amittat eas, et in hoc terminat. Ex- 
plicit exposicio mag. Walteri Burley de mem. et reminiscen- 
cla.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 74 (membr. 1390), fol. 185-189v 
Oxford, Magdalen College 80 (membr. xiv), fol. 63v-68 
« Magdalen College 146 (membr. xiv), fol. 112v-117 


36) Expositio de somno et vigilia 


Inc.: “Intencio philosophi in hoc libro...” 
Expl.: “... et hic finis est libri qui dicitur liber de sompno et vigilia 
secundum mag. Walterum de Burley.” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 203 


London, Lambeth Pal. 74 (membr. 1390), fol. 158-174 
Oxford, All Souls 86 (membr. xiv), fol. 212-222v 
« Magdalen College 146 (membr. xiv). fol. 83-95 
« Oriel College (membr. xv), fol. 69v-86v 


37) Expositio de longitudine et brevitate vitae 


Inc.: “Intencio Philosophi in hoc tractatu est determinare de causis 
longitudinis et brevitatis vite...” 
Expl.: “... secundum speciem longitudinis vite in aliis viventibus. Ex- 
plicit exposicio.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 74 (membr. 1390), fol. 152-158 
Oxford, Magdalen College 80 (membr. xiv), fol. 180v-185 
« Magdalen College 146 (membr. xiv), fol. 117v-123 
« Oriel College 12 (membr. xv), fol. 109-115 [anon.] 


38 


a 


Expositio de motu animalium 


Inc.: “De motu autem, etc. Secundum Philosophum 3° Phys., vo- 
lentem considerare de natura necesse est considerarede motu... 
Expl.: “... in uno tempore et non in alio. Postea recapitulant, ut patet. 
In hoc finitur liber. Explicit liber de motu animalium W. 
Burley.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 144rb-147vb 
« Lambeth Pal. 74 (membr. 1390), fol. 30rb-32v [in- 
complete] 
Oxford, Magdalen College 80 (membr. xiv), fol. 177v-180v 
« Oriel College 12 (membr. xv), fol. 115-119 [anon. 
and incomplete] 


39 


Expositio super Averrois De substantia orbis 


wa 


Inc.: “Prohemium huius libri continet duas partes...” 

Expl.: “... corporis celestis cum habitudine ad motorem primum. Ex- 
plicit exposicio de substancia orbis.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 74 (membr. 1390), fol. 1ν-ὃ [anon. | 
Oxford, Oriel College 12 (membr. xv), fol. 199-109 {anon.] 


40 


a 


Expositio et quaestiones super Metaphysicam Arist. 


Inc.: “Incipit questio metaph. Liceat nobis parumper dissesere de 
quadam proposicione quam dicit Arist. inveteri philosophia...” 
Expl.: “... expresse significant opposicionem. Explicit questio super 
librum prime philosophie.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Q, 290 (8. xiv). fol. 1-40v 


204 1. A. WEISHEIPL 


41) Divisiones et sententiae summarie super Metaph. 


Inc.: “Quoniam temporis interrupcione...” 
Expl.: “... inquantum substancia est.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 290 (s. xiv), fol. 46-56v 


42) Tractatus de formis (against Ockham) 


Inc.: “Notandum quod materia prima est materia remotissima respectu 
cuiuscumque compositi ex ea...” 

Expl.: “... que intencio non est directe cognita ab intellectu. Explicit 
tractatus burley de formis.” 
London, Lambeth Pal. 70 (membr. xiv), fol. 125ra-134vb 
Oxford, Bodl. Add. A. 370 (s. xv), fol. 143-166v 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2146 (membr. xiv), fol. 235-244v 

« Vat. lat. 2151 (membr. xv), fol. 131-148 


43) Commentum in lib. Sententiarum (lost) 
Inc.: “Cupiens aliquid, etc. In hoc pro[logo]...” [Bale] 
44) Tractatus primus: De comparacione specierum 


Inc.: In prima questione quarti Sentenciarum dixi quedam que ali- 
quibus dubia et aliquibus sophistica videbantur. Ideo ad 
requisicionem...” 

Expl.: “... et hec de questione ad presens sufficiat. Explicit tractatus 
de comparacione specierum.” 

*Bruges, de la Ville 501 (s. xv), fol. 70-105 
*Erfurt, Amplon. O. 76 
London, B. M. Harley 3243 (membr. xiv), fol. 92-100 [anon.] 
*Leipzig, Univ. Bibl. 529, fol. 127-132 
Rome, Casanatense 267 (s. xiv), fol. 92-117v 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 817 (membr. xiv), fol. 203-223 
« Vat. lat. 2148 (s. xv), fol. 46-54rb 
« Ottobon. lat. 318 (s. xv), fol. 101r-108v 
Venice, 5. Marco, lat. VI, 160 (2816), (a. 4. 1443), fol. 49-96 
Vienna, Dominikanerkloster 160/130 (membr. xiv), fol. 83-89v 


45) Quaestio disputata: utrum contradictio sit maxima oppositio 


Inc.: “Questio est utrum contradictio sit maxima opposicio, et est 
quinta questio de numero questio burlei in suo primo trac- 
tatu. Et arguo primo ad partem quam credo fore veram, sci- 
licet quod contradictio non sit maxima opposicio...” 

Expl. “... illa que in multo conveniunt, quare etc.” 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 2148 (s. xiv-xv), fol. 54-65 
« Ottobon. lat. 318 (s. xv), fol. 141vb-145vb 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 205 


Ed. Ryszard Palacz, Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum, 11 
(1963), 128-139. 


46) Tractatus secundus: De intentione et remissione formarum 


Inc.: “In hoc tractatu secundo intendo perscrutari de causa intrinseca 
susceptionis magis et minus...” 
Expl.: “... veritati fidei christiane.” 
*Bruges, de la Ville, 501 (s. xv), fol. 111-158v 
Munich, Clm. 4377 (8. xv), fol. 153v-160v 
Rome, Casanatense 267 (s. xiv), fol. 61-86 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 817 (membr. xiv), fol. 227-257v 


« Vat. lat. 2148 (8. xv), fol. 57-70v - 
« Vat. lat. 2185 (membr. xiv), fol. 21-23 [incomplete] 
« Vat. lat. 3026 (s. xv), fol. 1-14 


Ed. Venice 1496, fol. 2-15v 


47) Quodlibet: De primo et ultimo instanti (Toulouse; before 1327 and after 
Q. de susceptione magis et minus) 


Inc.: “Queritur utrum sit dare primum et ultimum instans rei perma- 
nentis sui esse ...” 
Expl.: “... est dare ultimum. Et sic patet quid dicendum sit de ista 
questione secundum burleum.” 
*Columbia Univ., Plimpton 171 (s. xv), fol. 7-10 
Florence, Bibl. Naz. 11. IV. 553 (a. d. 1455), fol. 65-67v 
Oxford, Canon. Misc. 177 (a. d. 1399), fol. 11-l4ra 
« Canon. Misc. 506 (s. xv), fol. 452-458 
*Paris, B. N. lat. 14514 (5. xiv), fol. 346-349v 
« BLN. lat. 16401 (s. xiv), fol. 120-125v 
« BLN. lat. 16621 (notebook xiv), fol. 136-142v 
Rome, Casanatense 267 (8. xiv), fol. 136-142v 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 3026 (s. xiv), fol. 14-l6v 


« Vat. lat. 3066 (s. xiv), fol. 52v-54 

« Chis. E. V. 161 (a. d. 1401), fol. 45-49v 
« Ottobon. lat. 381 (8. xv), 34-36 

« Vat. lat. 4545 (s. xv), fol. 48v-57v 


Ed. Venice 1501, H. ἃ C. Shapiro in Arch. f. Gesch. der Philo- 
sophie 47 (1965), 159-173. 


48) Expositio librorum Ethicorum 
Inc. ded.: “Reverendo in Christo patri et domino Ricardo divina 
disponente clementia Dunelmensis sedis episcopo Gualterus 


de Burley...” 


206 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


Inc. text.: “Etsi multorum scriptorum in disciplina morali commenta- 
rios...” 
Inc. Comm.: “Omnis ars et omnis doctrina, etc. Scientia moralis 
quae est actionibus voluntariis ut dicit Averroes...” 
Expl.: “... et ei qui dedit intelligere sint gracie iusticie. Amen.” 
*Berlin, 5. Bibl. lat. Fol. 482 (5. xiv), fol. 1-119 
*Bruges, de la Ville 502 (s. xiv), fol. 1-185 [mutil.] 
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius 490/486 (membr. xiv), fol. 
75-263 
« Peterhouse 93 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-102v [first 
three books missing] 
Florence, Laurenz. Fesul. 168 (membr. xiv), fol. 169-238v 
Oxford, Balliol College 95 (membr. xv), fol. 2-159 [mutil.] 
« Canon. Misc. 251 (a. d. 1424), fol. 1-151 
« Magdalen College 205 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-141 
« New College 242 (membr. xiv), fol. 2-168 
« Oriel College 57 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-208 
*Paris, B. N. lat. 6459 (s. xv) 
*Vatican, Urbin. lat. 1369 
Venice, 8. Marco, lat. VI, 88 (2530), (membr. xiv), fol. 1-247 
Ed. Venice 1481, 1500. 


49) Expositio super libros Politicorum 


a) Quaestiones super Politica 
Inc.: “Ut dicit Philosophus Ethicorum quinto... in hoc libro primo 
sunt novem. Explicit prohemium. Amen. Prima questio 
est quid est servus...” 
Expl.: “... sint gracie infinite. Amen.” 
Gambridge, Gonville & Caius College 505/383 (membr. xiv), 
fol. 1-101 


b) Scripium super libros Politicorum 


Inc. ded. I: “Reverendo in Christo patri et domino suo domino 
Ricardo ordinatione divina Dunelmensis episcopo...” 

Inc. ded. IT: “Sanctissimo patri ac domino Clementi supernaque 
vocatione papae sexto creatura vestra Gualterus de Burley...” 

Inc. Comm.: “Quoniam omnem civitatem, etc. Subiectum libri 
Politicorum est divitas in qua pro materia est multitudo ho- 
minum sufficiens ad omnia exercenda...” 

Expl.: “... et per consequens facilius attingent ad felicitatem; et 
in hoc finitur intencio Aristotelis super totum quod transla- 
tum est de greco in latinum super librum Politicorum.” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 207 


Cambridge, Univ. lib. li 2. 8. (membr. xiv), fol. 1-60v 
« Gonville & Caius 490/486 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-74v 
« Peterhouse 93 (membr. xiv), fol. 104v-166 
Florence, Laurenz. Plut. XII, sin. cod. 12 (membr. xiv), fol. 
2Qy-84v 
« Laurenz. Conv. Soppr. 455 (s. xiv-xv), fol. 77-128va 
[incomplete, ends in lib. 7] 
*Crakow, Bibl. Jagellon. 513 (s. xv), frag. fol. 45-48v, 64v, 
74, 81, 82r-v 
ἘΠ « Bibl. Jagellon. 675 (s. xv), fol. 2-155v [with comm. 
of Henry of Oyta] 
Oxford, Balliol College 95 (membr. xv), fol. 161-232 
« Balliol College 282 (membr. xiv), fol. 124v-202 [im- 
perf. ] 
« Magdalen College 205 (membr. xiv), fol. 141-202v 
« New College 242 (s. xiv), fol. 168-232 
« Oriel College 57 (s. xiv), fol. 208v-310 
Vatican, Borghese 129 (membr. xiv), fol. lv-148v [with de- 
dication to Clement VI] 
Vienna, Dominikanerkloster 93/57 (s. xiv), fol. 109-192 
*Wroclaw, Bibl. Univ. IV. F. 29 (5. xv), fol. 367-383 [extracts] 


For further MSS of Burley’s commentary on the Politics see the 
D. Phil. Thesis of Conor Martin, Bodl. D. Phil. Thesis Hilary Term 
1949, and 5. H. Thomson, “Walter Burley’s Commentary on the 
Politics of Aristotle,” Mélanges A. Pelzer (Louvain, 1947) 564. 


50) De Vitis et Mortbus Philosophorum 


Inc.: “De [vita et moribus| philosophorum veterum tractaturus multa 
que ab antiquis autoribus in diversis libris...” 

Expl.: “... Nihil in humanis adinvencionibus ex omni parte perfectum.” 
Ed. Hermann Knust, Tiibingen 1886 (Bibl. d. Litterarischen 
Vereins in Stuttgart 177). See J. O. Stigall, “The Manus- 
cript Tradition of the De Vita et Moribus Philosophorum of Wal- 
ter Burley,” Medievalia et Humanistica, 11 (1957), 44-57. 


Uncertain 


1) Auctoritates Philosophiae, or Flores Parvi 


Inc.: “Omnes homines naturaliter scire desiderant. Sensus visus nobis 
multas differentias rerum ostendit...” 

Expl.: “... Et ibi manebit causa brevitatis pro quo Deus sit benedictus 
per infinita secula seculorum.” 


208 1. A. WEISHEIPL 


now Bibl. Jagellon. 711 (s. xiv), fol. 48-82v 


« Bibl. Jagellon. 1453 (s. xv), fol. 394-478 
* « Bibl. Jagellon. 2032 (s. xiv-xv), fol. 384v-441v 
* & Bibl. Jagellon. 2001 (s. xv), fol. 202-270v 
*Wroclaw, Bibl. Univ. IV. Q. 51 (paper xiv), fol. 61-109 
* « Bibl. Univ. IV. Q. 55 (paper xv), fol. 243-278 


7. CAMPSALE, RICHARD DE 


Buogr. Fellow of Balliol College in 1304 (Balliol Deeds [O. H. S.] 141, 285), 
but mentioned as Fellow of Merton College in 1305 (Mert. Rec. 3630) 
and still in 1326 (Mert. Rec. 3655). He was regent Master in arts (“in 
artibus apud Oxoniam actualiter regens” Snappe’s Formulary [O. H. S.], 66) 
on April 6, 1308; and on October 18, 1322 he is mentioned as “sacre theo- 
logie professor” (zb7d., 71). He is last mentioned as the Chancellor’s Com- 
missary who absolved the Mayor of Oxford on January 10, 1326, from the 
censure of excommunication, (Mun. Acad. Oxon. [R. S.], 1, 114-6). See 
Emden 1, 344-5. 


Works 


1) Questiones date a Ricardo de Camsal super librum Priorum Analeticorum 
(17 qq. on lib. I-IT) 


Inc.: “Queratur utrum sillogismus sit subiectum huius. Quod non 
videtur quia si sic...” 

Expl.: “ ... eo quod tunc, nullus discursus in talibus esset regulatus.” 
Cambridge, Caius College 668*/645 (membr. xiv) fol. 76-117 
Ed. Edward A. Synan, The Works of Richard Campsall, vol. 1, 
Toronto (PIMS) 1968 [Studies and Texts 17]. 


2) Logica valde utilis et realis contra Ockham (after Ochkam’s Summa logicae) 


Inc.: “Domino Jesu, qui est terminus sive termino...” 
Expl.: “... et non convertitur, sicut patet lex contrariorum.” 
*Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2657 (s. xv), fol. 1-99v [fol. 44-45 missing 
and cap. 63 incompl.] 
Cf. E. Synan, “Richard of Campsall, an English Theologian of the 
14th Century,” Mediaeval Studies 14 (1952), 1-8; Texts and Studies 1: 
Nine Mediaeval Thinkers (Toronto, 1955), 183-232, 


3) Questiones super tres libros Physicorum and Notabilitates breves super 
omnes libros Physicorum 


Mentioned in the ancient catalogue of the library of St. Augustine’s 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 209 


Abbey, Ganterbury, n. 1423 (fol. 105, col. 2, n. 6, items 12 and 13). 
See M. R. James, Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, 362-3. 


4) Notabilia quedam mag. Ricardi Camsale pro materia de contingenti et prescien- 


cia Dei (= 16 propositiones) 

Inc.: “Accipiatur igitur ista propositio de futuris: Antichristus erit. 
Ista propositio potest esse falsa...” 

Expl.: “... quatuor arguit in Deo, sicut nec in propositione, ut satis 
clare patet ex dictis.” 
London, B. M. Harley 3243 (membr. xiv), fol. 88v 
Ed. E. A. Synan, “Sixteen Sayings by Richard of Campsall 
on Contingency and Foreknowledge,” Mediaeval Studies 24 
(1962), 257-262. 


8. CoLLINGHAM, WILLIAM DE 


Biogr. Born in the diocese of York. Mentioned as a Fellow of Merton in 
1331 (Mert. Rec. 3666). Nominated a Fellow of Queen’s College by the 
founder in 1341, and was still at Queen’s in 1348 (cf. Magrath, 1, 334-8). 
See Emden 1, 466. 


Works 


1) Tractatus de infinito tam logice quam philosophie naturali utilis 


NO 


Inc.: “Utrum aliquid sit actualiter infinitum...” 
Expl: “... pars esset divisa a toto.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. F. 135 (a. d. 1337), fol. 48-59 [according to 
Schum this treatise is ascribed to both Buckingham and 
“Guilelmi Collingham”] 


Due questiones naturales colynham 


Inc.: “Sciendum quod dicit Aristoteles 3° Metaph. in textu suo...” 

Expl.: “... non plus sequitur nisi quod aliquid corporeum et a seipso 
per accidens, et isitus proposicionis causa satis fuit superius 
declarata. Et sic finitur questio prima magistri Willelmi de 
Colingham Oxon.” 

Inc.: “Textus quem exponere intendo est textus Aristotelis...” 

Expl.: “... et sic patet quod argumentum factum in contrarium non 
procedit. Et sic finis est questiones Collingham exposicione 
5a p’p’ phisicorum.” 
Paris, B. N. lat. 6559 (membr. xiv), fol. 133-190v 

Mentioned in the catalogue of the ancient library of the Austin Friars 


210 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


in York, n. 306 F (cf. M. R. James, “The Catalogue of the Library 
of the Augustinian Friars at York,” Fasciculus Ioanni Willis Clark 
Dicatus, [Cambridge, 1909] 48). 


9. DumBLETon, JoHn 


Biogr. Dumbleton was born about 1310 in Gloucestershire within the 
diocese of Worcester. He is noted as a Fellow of Merton College in 1338 
(Mert. Rec. 3673) and is still mentioned in 1347-8 (Mert. Rec. 3680). He 
was named as a Fellow of Queen’s College in the founder’s statutes of 
February 10, 1340, at which time Dumbleton must have completed his 
necessary regency and begun the study of theology. He is again noted as 
a Fellow of Merton in 1344-45 (Mert. Rec. 3676-7). He seems to have 
been a Bachelor of Theology at the time of his presumed death in 1349. 
See Emden 1, 603. 


Works 


1) Summa logicae et philosophiae naturalis 


Inc. prol.: “Plurimorum scribencium grati laboris..,” 
Inc. P. I: “Incipiendum est a primis cum minimus error in principio 
in fine maxime est causa...” 
Expl. P. IX (incompl.): “... procul respicit et a longe.” 
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 499/268 (membr. xiv), 
fol. 1-162v 
« Peterhouse 272 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-111 [ends 
imperfectly in P. IX, c. 46] 

*Dubrovnik-Ragusa, Dominikanerbibliothek 32 (s. xv), fol. 
89-200 [cf. Starine (Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i 
Umjetnosti), 28 (Zagrebu 1896), p. 4] 

London, B. M. Royal 10. B. XIV (membr. xiv), fol. 1-244 


« Lambeth Palace 79 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-212r 
Munich, Clm 4377 (s. xv), fol. 161-195v [frag.: sect. of P. II- 
IIT] 


Oxford, Magdalen College 32 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-292 
« Magdalen College 195 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-131 
« Merton College 279 (membr. xiv), fol. 4-179 [ends 
imperf. in P. VIII, c. 4] 
« Merton College 306 (membr. xiv.), fol. 9-118 [mu- 
til. end P. TX] 
Padua, Bibl. Antoniana XVII. 375 (s. xiv-xv), fol. 1-205 
Paris, B. N. lat. 16146 (membr. xiv English), fol. 2-141ra 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 211 


« BN. lat. 16621 (paper xiv), fol. 117v-123v; 169-180v 
[frag. from P. IIT] 
« Universitaire 599 (membr. xiv English), fol. 1-128 [mu- 
til. at end of P. IX] 
*Prague, Capit. Metropol. 1291 (L. XLVII) 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 954 (paper xv), fol. 1-201 [ascr. to Ockham] 


« - Vat. lat. 6750 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-202 
« Pal. lat. 1056 (paper xiv), fol. 1-144 [ends in P. 
Vly] 


Venice, 5. Marco lat. VI. 79 (2552), (membr. xiv), fol. 1-229 
[fol. 230-232v = tabula librorum] 

Worcester, Bibl. Cathed. F. 6 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-165 
« Bibl. Cathed. F. 195 (membr. xiv), fol. 91-126v 
[ends in P. III, c. 8] 


2) Expositio capituli quarti Bradwardini De proportionibus 


Inc.: “In hoc compendio intellectum sex conclusionum quarti capituli 
tractatus proportionum mag. Thome Bradwardin intendo 
brevissime declarare...” 

Expl: “... ad proportionem superficiorum suarum eodem ordine est 
sexquialtera, igitur etc. Explicit Dummulton.” 

Paris, B. N. Nouv. Acq. lat. 625 (membr. xiv), fol. 70v-71v 


Uncertain 


1) Liber de insolubilibus, de significatione et suppositione terminorum, de arte 
obligatoria, etc. 


Inc.: “De sophismatibus que non re sed nomine insolubilia extant, 
superest pertractare...” 

Expl.: “... Expliciunt tractatus de diversis insolubilibus, et de signi- 
ficatione et suppositione terminorum, et confusione et dis- 
tributione eorundem, et de modis signis universalibus et de 
arte obligatoria cum aliis incidentibus.” 

Oxford, Merton College 306 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-7v 


10. Estry, WILLIAM DE 
Biogr. Fellow of Merton College in 1305. He seems to have retained his 


Fellowship until 1315, when he became Rector of Stowting, Kent. See 
Emden 1, 651. 


212 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


Works (lost) 


1) Lectura magistri W. de Estry super libros phisicorum 


Mentioned in the ancient catalogue of the library of St. Augustine’s 
Abbey, Canterbury, n. 1423 (fol. 105, col. 2, n. 6, item 14). See M.R. 
James, Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, 362-3. 


11. Hennor, WinLIAM DE 


Biogr. Bachelor Fellow of Merton College in 1299 and Fellow by 1301. 
He is still mentioned in the records for 1305. See Emden, 2, 909. 


Works (lost) 


1) Lectura brevis magistri W. de hennor’ super 9” a™ et 14" metaphysice 


Mentioned in the ancient catalogue of the library of St. Augustine’s 
Abbey, Canterbury, n. 1423 (fol. 105, col. 2, n. 6, item 16). See M. R. 
James, Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, 362-3. 


12. HeyTespury, WILLIAM 


Biogr. Born before 1313, probably in Wiltshire in the Salisbury diocese. 
He is first mentioned as a Fellow of Merton College in 1330 (Mert. Rec. 
3660). In February 1340 he was named one of the foundation Fellows 
of Queen’s College together with Dumbleton. But shortly he returned to 
Merton. He was a “Doctor in Theology” by July 1348 (Mun. Acad. Oxon., 
I, 167). Heytesbury may have been Chancellor of the University from 
1353 until 1354, and again from Pentecost 1370 until Pentecost 1372. He 
died in December of 1372 or in January of 1373. See Emden 2, 927-8. 


Works 
1) Insolubilia 


a) Inc.: “Iam sequuntur regule de insolubilibus, et primo videndum 
est quid sit casus...” 
Expl.: “... affirmative respondens.” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 270 (membr. xiv), fol. 37-42v 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 3065 (s. xv), fol. 28-30v [anon., “secundum 
usum heusonie”] 


b) Inc.: “Insolubile est proposicio affirmativa vel negativa aliqualiter 
esse vel aliqualiter non esse significativa...” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 213 


Expl.: “... sic dicendum est ad omnia consimilia. Expliciunt in- 
solubilia valde utilia secundum hetysbery.” 
Padua, Bibl. Univ. 1123 (membr. xiv), fol. 22vb-24rb 


2) Tractatus consequentiarum 

Inc.: “Iuxta hunc textum tactum in libro Perihermenias de quolibet 
dicitur affirmacio vel negacio. Ideo quero hanc questionem, 
utrum aliqua sit consequentia bona et formalis que de se 
non valet...” 

Expl: “... quia totum antecedens includit contradictionem sicut 
antecedens, etc. Explicit tractatus ‘Iuxta hunc textum’ nun- 
cupatur.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 182/215 (s. xv), p. 
102-116 [expl.: “... qui sunt quam pro omnibus qui erunt.”| 
« Corpus Christi College 244/245, (membr. xv), 
fol. 39v-58v [expl.: “... ad lapidem.”] 

« Corpus Christi College 378 (s. xv), fol. 82-84v 
[incompl.] 

Padua, Bibl. Univ. 1123 (membr. xiv), fol. 24rb-28vb [anon. ] 

Rome, Casanatense 85 (a. d. 1410), fol. 13ra-22rb [“Explicit 
tractatus qui vocatur iuxta hunc testum correctus secun- 
dum mag. robertum Alyngton.”] 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 3065 (s. xv), fol. 76ra-83va [expl.: “... satis 
evidenter sequitur antecedens esse verum et consequens 
falsum; quapropter non valet consequencia, ergo, etc.”] 

Venice, S. Marco, Z. lat. 277 (1728), (c. 1399), fol. 23-33 

Ed. Venice 1517, fol. 108v-115v 

3) De proposicionibus multiplicibus 

Inc.: “Qui autem nominum virtutis sunt ignari et ipsi disputantes 
et alios audientes paralogizant de facili, pro elencorum. Cum 
igitur in disputacione cuiuslibet de vocali significato de- 
beat...” 

Expl.: “... Unde et de proposicionibus multiplicium significacionibus 
iam hec dicta ad presens pro iuvenibus informandis suffici- 
ant. Amen. Explicit tractatus Hentisberi de proposicionum 
multiplictum significacione valde raro inventus.” 

Venice, S. Marco, lat. VI. 160 (2816), (a. d. 1443), fol. 252- 
253v 


4) De veritate et falsitate propositions 
Inc.: “Omnis propositio est vera vel falsa...” 


Ed. Venice 1494, fol. 183v-188 


214 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


5) Casus obligatorii 


Inc.: “Primo ponitur talis casus quod heri videmus: Sortes et nullus 
alius a Sorte videmus et bene... Secundo ponitur talis casus 
quod inter duo...” 

Expl.: “... Expliciunt casus obligatorii hesberi.” 

Oxford, Canon. lat. 278 (5. xiv), fol. 70-72 
Venice, S. Marco, Z. lat. 310 (1577), (s. xv), fol. 96va-b 


6) De sensu composito et diviso 


Inc.: “Arguendo a sensu composito ad sensum divisum frequenter 
fallit argumentum, unde non sequitur...” 
“Copenhagen, Thott 581 (9. xv), fol. 119-127 
Florence, Naz. Cent., Magl. V. 43 (membr. xiv-xv), fol. 
38-44v 
Oxford, Canon. Misc. 219 (a. d. 1395), fol. 4-6 
Rome, Casanatense 85 (s. xv), fol. 32v-36 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2136 (s. xiv), fol. 32v-36 


« Vat. lat. 2139 (s. xiv), fol. 155v-175v [with comm.] 
« Vat. lat. 2154 (5. xiv-xv), fol. 43-67 [with comm.] 
« Vat. lat. 2189 (s. xv), fol. 39v-50 [with comm.] 
« Vat. lat. 3038 (s. xv), fol. 15-22 

« Vat. lat. 3065 (s. xv), fol. 30vb-34vb [“Expliciunt 
consequencie compilate a ven. arcium doc. mag. Rodulfo 
Strode.” | 


Venice, 5. Marco, Z. lat. 277 (1728), (membr. xiv), fol. 12-16 
« 5. Marco, A. lat. 310 (1577), (s. xv), fol. 48-53 


7) Sophismata XXXII 


a) Inc.: “Omnis homo est omnis homo...” 
Expl.: “... set uterque modus loquendi est impossibilia de vi vocis.” 
Cambridge, Peterhouse 102 (membr. xiv), fol. 141-218 [end 
imperf. | 
*Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 332 (membr. xiv), fol. 3-100v [first so- 
phisma lacking] 
Oxford, Trinity College 198 (5. xiv-xv), fol. 1-176 
« Canon. lat. 311 (membr. xv), fol. 9-28v, 37-38, 
29 [anon.; attr. to Thomas’ Walleys or Hervei in Cata- 
logue] 
« Canon. Misc. 203 (8. xv), fol. 75-99 [selected so- 
phismata with comm.] 
Padua, Bibl. Univ. 1123 (membr. xiv), fol. 97-172v 
Paris, B. N. lat. 16234 (membr. xiv), fol. 81-146 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 215 


Vatican, Vat. lat. 2137 (5. xiv), fol. 1-78v [24 sophismata] 
« Vat. lat. 2138 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-86 

Venice, S. Marco, Z. lat. 310 (1577), (s. xv), fol. 54-78v 
[“Sex sophismata principalia edita et compilata per mag. 
Guilielmum Hentisberum...”] 

Ed. Venice 1494, fol. 77v-170v [with comm. of Gaetano di 
Thiene] 


b) Epitome Summe Sophismatum Guilelmi Hentisberi completum anno domint 
M°CCC© octogesimo octavo in nostro collegio de Mertone 


Inc.: “Adspiciens a longe condicionem iuvenum elegancium suis 

ingeniis tanquam visibus aquelinis...” 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 3056 (s. xv), fol. 1-41 

Venice, Conv. S. Giovanni e Paoli, cod. 539 (paper xv), fol. 
1-69 [“Expliciunt Sophismata 'magistri Wilhelmi Hentis- 
beri, scriptum Oxonii anno Domini MCCCLXXXXIII 
post quartum sonum noctis Dominicae primae quadrige- 
simae per fr. Thomam Utinensem Ord. praed.”] This 
codex is now lost, but described by D. M. Berardelli, Co- 
dicum omnium Latinorum et Italicorum qui manuscripti in Biblio- 
theca SS. Joannis et Pauli Venetiarum apud PP. Praedicatores 
asservantur Catalogus. Nouva Raccolta d’Opuscoli scienti- 
fici e filologici, t. 38, Venezia 1783, opusc. II, p. 149. 


8) Regulae solvendi sophismata (a. d. 1335) 


Inc. prol.: “Regulas solvendi sophismata non ea que quidem ap- 
parenti contradiccione...” 
Inc. cap. 1.: “Secundum Philosophum in Predicamentis, cap. 40, 
quadratura circuli si est scibilis...” 
Inc. cap. 2: “Scire multis modis dicitur, sed sive...” 
Inc. cap. 3: “In terminis relativis sophismata multa...” 
Inc. cap. 4: “Incipit dupliciter solet exponi...” 
Inc. cap. 5: “Circa finem seu terminum tam active potentie...” 
Inc. cap. 6: “Tria sunt predicamenta vel genera quorum...” 
*Bruges, de la Ville 497 (membr. xiv), fol. 46-59va 
¥ « de la Ville 500 (membr. xiv), fol. 33-71va [c. 2-6] 
Erfurt, Amplon. F. 135 (a. d. 1337), fol. 1-17 [om. prol.] 
* «  Amplon. F. 313 (s. xiv), fol. 192-209 [exc. c. 6] 
ἘΠ « Amplon. Q. 270 (s. xiv), fol. 1-36v [cap. 2-6] 
Munich, Clm. 23530 (5. xv), fol. 222v-255 [prol. and cap. 1 
omitted; cap. 5 entitled: “Incipit tractatus de potentia 
activa et passiva, et de latitudine intensiva in motu.” | 


216 


A 


J. A. WEISHEIPL 


Oxford, Canon. Misc. 221 (s. xv), fol. 60-85 

Padua Antoniana, XIX, 407 (5. xv), fol. 26-30v [prol. and 
cap. 1] 
« Bibl. Univ. 1123 (membr. xiv), fol. 50rb-65v [cap. 
2, 4, 5, and 6] 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 2136 (s. xiv), fol. 1-32 


« Vat. lat. 2138 (s. xiv), fol. 89-109v 
« Vat. lat. 2130 (s. xv), fol. 173-177 [cap. 5 with 
comin. | 
« Vat. lat. 3058 (s. xv), fol. 122-139 [cap. 6 with 
comm. of Thomas of Udine, O. P.] 
« Chigi E. V. 161 (c. 1401), fol. 63v-70v [cap. 2] 
« Ottobon. lat. 662 (membr. xiv), fol. 121-127v 
[cap. 5] 

Venice, 5. Marco, Z. lat. 310 (1577), (5. xv), fol. 1-3v [prol. 
and cap. 1] 


« S. Marco, Z. lat. 277 (1728), (a. d. 1399), fol. 17- 

22 [cap. 5 with comm.] 

« S. Marco, lat. VI. 160 (2816), (a. d. 1443), fol. 255- 

275 [cap. 6 with comm.] 

« S. Marco, lat. VIII, 38 (a. d. 1391), fol. 66v-72 
Ed. Venice 1494, fol. 9v-52 


9) De probationibus conclusionum 


Inc. 
Inc. 
Inc. 
Inc. 
Inc. 


cap. 1: “A est scitum a te et idem A est tibi dubium...” 
cap. 2: “Infinite sunt partes Sortis...” 

cap. 3: “Una proposicio que non est plures...” 

cap. 4: “Quod non sit dare maximum quod Sortes...” 
cap. 5: “Aliquis est motus uniformis quoad tempus...” 


Florence, Laurenz. Ashb. 171 (a. d. 1440), fol 13-3lra 
Oxford, Canon. Misc. 376 (s. xv), fol. 23-32 [frag.] 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2189 (s. xv), fol. 13v-38 
Venice, 5. Marco, Z. lat. 277 (1728), (c. 1399), fol. 34-39v 
[anon.; cap. 1 only] 
« S. Marco, Ζ. lat. 277 (1728), (c. 1399), fol. 40-45 
[cap. 2-3 with comm.] 
« S. Marco, lat. VIII, 38 (a. 4. 1391), fol. 40-54v 
Ed. Venice 1494, fol. 188v-203v 


10) Zermini Naturales 
Inc.: “Natura est principium motus et quietis in quo est primo per 


se et non secundum accidens. Istam diffinicionem ponit 
Philosophus et Commentator in 2° Phys...” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 917 
“... cuiusmodi est tabula. Hec complecio terminorum philo- 
sophie compilata a mag. Wilhelmo Hesbri.” 
Florence, Laurenz. Plut. 83, cod. 28 (s. xv), fol. 1-7v 
London, B. M. Royal 8. Z. XVIII (membr. xiv), fol. 69v- 
75 [anon.] 
Munich, Clm. 5961 (a. d. 1441), fol. 22-26 [“Expliciunt 
termini naturales sec. usum Oxonii”] 
« Clm. 8997 (s, xiv), fol. 163-167 [“compilata a mag. 
Wilhelmo Hesbri”] 
Naples, Bibl. Naz. VIII. F. 10 (a. d. 1425), fol. 107-114 
[anon.] 
Oxford, Canon. Misc. 393 (a. d. 1402 Padua), fol. 78-83 
{anon. ] 
« New College 289 (s. xv), fol. 38-50v [with comm. of 
John Garisdale] 
Padua, Bibl. Univ. 1123 (membr. xiv), fol. 36vb-39rb [anon.] 
Paris, B. N. lat. 6673 (s. xv), fol. 14-18 [anon.] 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 5132 (s. xv), fol. 41-48v [anon.] 
Vienna, Dominikanerkloster 93/57 (s. xiv), fol. 99-109v 
{anon.] 
« Nat. Bibl. lat. 4698 (5. xiv), fol. 114v-120v 
Worcester, Bibl. Cathed. F. 118 (5. xv), fol. 32rb-35rb 


Expl: 


13. Maupiru, JoHNn 


Biogr. Born in the diocese of Worcester, he is mentioned as a Fellow of 
Merton College in 1309 (Mert. Rec. 3636). This Fellowship he seems to 
have vacated in 1319, but he was granted licence for further study on 
October 4, 1319, and October 4, 1320 (Reg. Cobham, Worc., Worces. Hist. 
Soc., 243, 256, 260). He was a member of the ‘familia’ of Richard de 
Bury, and was appointed dean of Auckland, Durham, in 1343, a few years 
before De Bury’s death. See Emden 2, 1243-4. 


Works 
1) TYabulae Mathematices (a. ἃ. 1310) 


Inc.: “Quia sciencia astronomie sine debitis...” 

Tab. prima: De chorda, et arcu recto et verso, umbris, etc. 

Tab. secunda: De arcu equinocciali elevato, et horis, etc. 

Tab. tertia: De altitudine stellarum, et arcu diurno stelle, et distancia 
ab equinoccio. 

Tab. quarta: De ascensionibus regionis tue etc. 


218 J. 4. WEISHEIPL 


*Cambridge, Univ. Libr. Gg. VI. 3 
Oxford, Laud. Misc. 674 (SC 504), (membr. xiv), fol. 67-73 


2) Tractatus de doctrina theologica (completus 1342) 


Inc.: “Legimus in Scripturis Sacris...” (Tanner) 
*Sarum Cath. 167, art. 3 


14. Reve, WILLIAM 


Biogr. Born in the diocese of Exeter, he was reared by Master Nicholas of 
Sandwich (cf. Powicke, Medieval Books..., Ῥ. 90). He is listed as a Fellow 
of Merton College in 1344 (Mert. Rec. 3676) and still in 1357 (Mert. Rec. 
4148). He was appointed Bishop of Chichester on October 11, 1368, and 
consecrated at Avignon on September 2, 1369. He died on August 18, 
1385. (Will published by F. M. Powicke, Medieval Books..., 87-92). See 
Emden 3, 1556-60. 


Works 


1) Tabulae astronomicae (or Canones Tabularum) 


Oxford, Bodl. 432 (SC 2589), (a. d. 1460), fol. 28-35 
« Wood Ὁ. 8 (SC 8538), (s.. xv), fol. 48ν- 
« Jesus College 46 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-42 [Iste liber 
constat Wilelmo Rede] 


15. SEGRAVE, WALTER DE 


Biogr. Fellow of Merton College in 1321 (Mert. Rec. 3621) and still in 
1337 (Mert. Rec. 4147b). Elected dean of Chichester May 17, 1342 (Cal. 
Pap. Let., 111, 209, 211, 254), and Chancellor of Richard de Bury in 1340 
(Reg. Palat. Dunelm., [R. 5.1, III, 426). He seems to have died by June 
1349. See Emden 3, 1664. 


Works 
1) De insolubilibus 
Inc.: “Sicut vult Philosophus 2° Metaphisice, non solum debemus...” 
Expl.: “... tamen intelligitur in illo generali.” 
Erfurt, Amplon. Q. 276 (a. d. 1295-1333), fol. 159-162 [Ex- 
plicit insol. mag. Walteri (erasure) de Anglia. | 


«Κ᾿ Amplon. O. 76 (membr. xiv), fol. 21v-34 [“... mag. 
Walterii de Sex Grave de Anglia”] 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 219 


Oxford, Canon. Misc. 219 (SC 1395), fol. 1-3v [beginning 
missing; “... expliciunt insolubilia mag. gualterii de sex- 
grave cuius anima requiescat in pace.” | 


16. SuTTon, WILLIAM DE 


Biogr. Fellow of Merton College from 1330 (Mert. Rec. 3417) until 1346 
(Mert. Rec. 4141). Vicar of St. Peter’s in the East, Oxford, from February 
1, 1346, until his death. Seems to have died by December 1349. See Em- 
den 3, 1826. 


Works 
1) De suppositionrbus 


Inc.: “Ut iuvenes habeant faciliorem cognicionem in supposicionibus 
terminorum, breves regule atque generales sunt ponende. 
Primo videndum est quid sit supposicio quantum ad eius 
esse et quomodo..” 


Expl.: “... et iste stat mobiliter. Explicit textus de supposicionibus.” 
Munich, Clm. 4379 (s. xiv), fol. 198 
« Clm. 4384 (a. d. 1340), fol. 123v-131v [with comm. ; 
“supposiciones edite a magno cetu philosophorum in an- 
8114} 
Vienna, Dominikanerkloster 160/130 (membr.xiv), fol. 123ra- 
rb 


« Dominikanerkloster 160/130 (membr. xiv), fol. 96- 
100v [13 “sophismata curialia” on the text] 


2) De consequentiis 


Inc.: “Quia in sophismatibus probandis et improbandis utimur con- 
sequentiis, que...” 
Expl.: “... ne igitur proxilitas animi reportancium perturbet ecce 
finis. Explicit textus de consequenciis.” 
Vienna, Dominikanerkloster 160/130 (membr. xiv), fol. 123rb- 
124 
« Dominikanerkloster 160/130 (membr. xiv), fol. 100v- 
109v [“scriptum Sutonis Anglici” with commentary] 


17. SWINESHEAD, RicHARD 


Biogr. Earlest mention of ‘Richard’ Swyneshed as a Fellow of Merton 
College is in 1344-45 (Mert. Rec. 3676), and he is still listed in 1355. To- 
gether with Richard Billingham and others, he supported Mag. John Wyl- 


220 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


yot in his election to the Chancellorship in 1349 (Cal. of Close Rolls, Edw. 
ΠῚ, 1349-1354, p. 74). He was ordained deacon to the title of Fellowship 
on March 29, 1354. It would seem that Richard must be distinguished 
from Roger Swyneshed, who later became a Benedictine, and John, a 
Fellow of Merton College, who distinguished himself in Civil and Canon 
Law. See Emden 3, 1836-7. 


Works 


1) Calculationes 


Inc.: “Penes quid habent intensio et remissio qualitatis attendi plures 

sunt posiciones. Pro quo tamen primo est notandum quod 

intensio potest dupliciter...” 

.. ad puncta intrinseca quam ad extremum remissius; patet 

ergo prima pars conclusionis, etc.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius 499/268 (membr. xiv), fol. 
165-203 

*Erfurt, Amplon. O. 78 (c. 1346), fol. 1-36v [attr. to “clymi- 
ton” ] 

Paris, B. N. lat. 6558 (membr. xiv), fol. 1-70va [“Richardi 
de Glhymi Eshedi”] 
« BN. lat. 16621 (s. xiv notebook) [fragments] 

*Pavia, Aldini 314, fol. 41-44v 

*Perugia, Bibl. Comm. 1062 (pap. xv), fol. 1-82 [Johannis 
Suiset ang.] 

*Rome, Angelica 1963 (s. xv), fol. 59r-v (incomplete) 

*  « Vittorio Emanuele 250, fol. 79-82 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 3095 (s. xv), fol. 1-118v [“Riccardi suisset 


ςς 


Expl.: 


ang.” 
* « Vat. lat. 3064, fol. 82-86v 
« Chigi E. IV. 120 (s. xv), fol. 1-112v [“mag. Ricar- 


do de Swynishede” | 
Venice, 5. Marco, lat. VI, 226 (2565), (s. xv), fol. lra-98v 
Worcester, Bibl. Cathed. F. 35 (s. xv), fol. 27-65rb, 70ra- 
75v [fragments; Swyneshed] 
Ed. Padua ὁ. 1477, 1489, Pavia 1498, Venice 1505, 1520 


2) Tractatus de motu locali 


Inc.: “Multe possint elici conclusiones sive regule super variacionem 
proporcionum et motu ex variacione potencie motive ad 
suam resistenciam, et econtra. Et quia omnis variacio po- 
tencie motive seu resistive vel est uniformis vel difformis...” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 921 


Expl.: “... his inde motus alteracionis et quemadmodum variata fuerit 
ipsa proporcio, ita et velocitas, ideo etc. Et ecce finis. Ex- 
plicit tractatus de Swineshede de motu locali.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 499/268 (membr. xiv), 
fol. 213rb-215rb 
*Seville, Golombina 7-7-29 (5. xv), fol. 30va-34rb [anon.] 


3) Tractatus de intensione et remissione formarum (6 cap.) 


Inc.: “In primo de celo Philosophus comm. 35 arguit corpus infinitum 
circumvolvi non posse; ad ciuus probacionem capit quod 
sicut...” 

Expl.: “... Cum igitur aer aut B tantam latitudinem deperdet quan- 
tam ipsa aqua, scilicet 3 illius latitudinis. Explicit tractatus 
de Swynshede.” 

Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College 499/268 (membr. xiv), 
fol. 204-211v 
Worcester, Bibl. Cathed. F. 35 (s. xv), fol. 65va-69vb 


Uncertain 


1) Questiones quatuor super Physicas magistri Ricard 


Inc.: “Utrum in omni motu potencia motoris excedit potenciam rei 
mote. Et probo quod non, quia tunc vel esset...” 

Inc. q. 2: “Utrum qualitas suscipit magis et minus...” 

Inc. q. 3: “Utrum aliquod corpus simplex possit moveri eque velociter 
in vacuo et in pleno...” 

Inc. q. 4: “Utrum onme transmutatum in transmutacionis inicio sit 
in eo ad quod primitus transmutatur...” 

Expl.: “ως in tractatu suo de coloribus, ponendo tamen quod albedo 
sit lux et opatitiis [sic] admixti; respondetur per dicta in alia 
questione, etc.” 

Vatican, Vat. lat. 2148, fol. 71-75, fol. 78 [frag. of qq. 1-2] 
« Vat. lat. 4429, fol. 64-70v [q. 2] 

Venice, S. Marco, lat. VI, 72 (2810), (s. xv), fol. 81-112 
« S. Marco, lat. VI, 72 (2810), (5. xv), fol. 168-169v 


[ᾳ. 4] 
18. TEWKESBURY 


Biogr. A certain Tewkesbury is mentioned as a Merton College Fellow in 
1340-1 (Mert. Rec. 3673; cf. Mert. Mun. [O. H. 5.1, 37). It is not certain 
whether this is the same as “Johannes Teukesbury” mentioned by Tanner 
(Bibl. Brit.-Hib., 706). 


222 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


Works 


1) Sophisma de alieratione 


Inc.: “Uniformiter continue variari...” [Bale] 
It is not certain whether the work seen by Bale is identical with: 


a) “Uniformiter continue variabitur alteracio uniformis. Ad 
quod sophisma arguitur sic...” 
Venice, S. Marco. lat. VIII. 19 (3267), (s. xv), fol. 193-211 


b) “Uniformiter continue variatur alteracio uniformis...” 


Paris, B. N. lat. 16621 (s. xiv), fol. 124-130 


19. Witton, THomas 


Biogr. Thomas de Wylton is noted as a Fellow of Merton College in 1288- 
9 (Mert. Rec. 3612) and still in 1300-1 (Mert. Rec. 4063). On April 26, 
1304, he was granted licence to study at a university in England or abroad 
for four years. He was certainly studying theology at Paris on Nov. 6, 1308. 
He was a Bachelor of Theology by 1311 (Cal. Pap. Let., ΤΊ, 82) and a Mas- 
ter of Theology of Paris by March 1314 (Chart. Univ. Paris., 11, 171). He 
was Canon of St. Paul’s London, on Nov. 13, 1316, and Chancellor by 
August 1320; the position of Chancellor was vacated by 1327. Although 
he held many prebends in England, he remained in Paris at least until 
Nov. 1, 1322. 


Works 


1) Quaestiones in lib. Physicorum 


Inc.: “Cum natura sit principium motus et quietis et per consequens...” 
*Cesena, Bibl. Malatestiana, Plut. VIII, sin. cod. 2, fol. 3 


2) Quaestiones De anima 


Inc.: “Bonorum honorabilium, etc. [Queritur] an de anima possit 
esse sciencia. Quod non videtur. Sciencia est habitus intel- 
lectualis. Anima non intelligit seipsam...” 

Oxford, Balliol College 91 (a. d. 1334-49), fol. 247-277v 
* « Magdalen College 63 


3) Actus inaugurales (c. 1312-13) 


i) Vesperies 
Inc.: “Utrum relationes absolute que dicuntur de Deo secundum 
substantiam...” 
Expl.: “... a deitate. Ideo opinio nulla.” 


REPERTORIUM MERTONENSE 223 


ii) Quaestio in Aula 
Inc.: “Utrum relationes respective que dicuntur de Deo ex tem- 
pore...” 
Expl.: “... relatio enim formarum est in se ipsa.” 
11) Resumpta 
Inc.: “Utrum omnes rationes absolute que dicuntur de Deo...” 
Expl.: “... in rebus autem materialibus non. Alia per idem potest 
solve.” 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 1086 (membr. ante 1323), fol. 170-171v 
Ed. P. Glorieux, AFH 24 (1931), 7-11 


4) Quaestiones disputatae (1314-20) 


i) Contra Durandum de S. Porciano (c. 1314) 
Inc : “Utrum in intellectu possint esse plures intellectiones simul...” 
Expl.: “... nec sufficit habitudo maior in actu ad unum obiectum 
quam ad aliud.” 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 1086 (membr. ‘ante 1323), fol. 193-194v 
« Borghese 36 (membr. xiv), fol. 99-101v 


ii) Contra Petrum Auriolem (c. 1319) 
Inc.: “Utrum virtus in quantum sit ens per accidens...” 
*Oxford, Balliol College 63 (5. xiv), fol. 19 


11) Contra Petrum Auriolem 
Inc.: “Utrum habitus theologicus sit practicus vel speculativus...” 
*Oxford, Balliol College 63 (s. xiv), fol. 19v 


iv) Contra Petrum Auriolem: De anima intellectiva 

Inc.: “Utrum intellectivam esse formam corporis humani possit 

ratione necessaria et evidenti convinci...” 

Expl.: “... quin sit aeternum ex parte ante et 6 comverso.” 
*Oxford, Balliol College 63 (8. xiv), fol. 52-54 [incompl.] 
*Pelpin, Seminarium Duchowne 53 (102), (membr. xiv), fol. 

217vb-223rb 
Ed. W. Setiko, Studia Mediewistyczne 5 (Warsaw 1964), 75-116 


v) Quaestiones tres 
Inc.: “Utrum sit tantum una prudentia directiva...” 
*Barcelona, Arxiu de la Corona d’Arago, Ripoll. 95 (s. xv), 
fol. 35-40v 


vi) Quaestio de susceptione magis et minus 
Inc.: “Utrum qualitas suscipiat magis et minus...” 
Oxford, Canon. Misc. 226 (s. xv), fol. 38-43 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 2148 (s. xv), fol. 71-75 


224 J. A. WEISHEIPL 


5) Quaestiones Quodlibitales (qq. 23) 


Inc.: “An essentia divina sit perfectio infinita intensive...” 
Expl.: “... quod paternitas et essencia realiter different, quod ipsimet 


negant.” 
Vatican, Vat. lat. 1086 (membr. xiv), fol. 15v-79v 


6) Tractatus de validis mendicantibus numquid sint in statu perfectionis 
*Oxford, Bodl. Digby 75, fol. 122-125 


Uncertain 


1) Quaestiones de generatione et corruptione 


Inc.: “Sicut dicit Philosophus 3° de anima, sicut res sunt separa- 
biles...” 
*Erfurt, Amplon. F. 348 (s. xiv), fol. 158v-174v 


2) De oratione dominica 


Inc.: “Debes cognoscere quae sunt...” (Glorieux, 462) 


Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 


Fragmentation of Farms and Fields 


in the Chiltern Hills 
Thirteenth Century and Later 


DAVID RODEN 


porate inheritance (that is inheritance by more than one heir) 
could, through the dismemberment of compact holdings, produce a 
field pattern of unenclosed strips held by different tenants. In medieval 
England at least some of the subdivided fields of Kent, the East Riding of 
Yorkshire and parts of East Anglia were created by division following the 
death of a land holder It has also been established, in recent years, that 
substantial tenurial fragmentation of complete holdings and fields might 
occur where impartible inheritance prevailed, especially during periods 
of rapidly growing population. Lords sometimes split larger tenancies so 
as to increase manorial rents and services,? but alienation by sale, lease 
and gift, both within and outside family groups, was a more significant 
divisive force. In Norfolk and Suffolk, for example, tenemental units held 
under customs of impartibility could be inherited by more than one son, 
although they were “just as likely to break-up by sale as by division between 
sons.” Lands might be alienated to a number of sons and daughters 
before death, holding either jointly or individually, or beyond the immediate 
family: “the result was that villein tenements became divided into a num- 
ber of fragments, held in part by members of one family, in part by out- 
siders.”® 


i H. L. Gray, English Field Systems (Cambridge, Mass., 1915), 293-8, 303-4, 337; A. R. H. Ba- 
ker, “Open Fields and Partible Inheritance on a Kent Manor,” Economic History Review, Second 
series, 17 (1964) 1-23; T. A. M. Bishop, “Assarting and the Growth of Open Fields,” Economic 
History Review, 6 (1935) 13-29; G. G. Homans, “Partible Inheritance of Villagers’ Holdings,” 
Economic History Review, 8 (1937-8) 48-56; B. Dodwell, “Holdings and Inheritance in East Anglia,” 
Economic History Review, Second series, 20 (1967) 59-61. 

2 Μ. Μ. Postan, “The Charters of the Villeins,” being Chapter 2 of C. N. L. Brooke and M. M. 
Postan (eds.), Carte Nativorum, a Peterborough Abbey Cartulary of the Fourteenth Century, Northampton 
Record Society Publications, 20 (1960), (for 1945-6), p. xxxix; J. A. Raftis, Tenure and Mobility, 
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Studies and Texts, No. 8, 1964, 17-18. 

3 B. Dodwell, of. cit., 63, 64. 


296 D. RODEN 


The actual mechanics of fractionation under these and similar circum- 
stances, and the significance of the features produced in the context of local 
field and tenemental systems has still to be examined in detail. In particular, 
there is as yet no satisfactory answer to the important question of whether 
land divided up by alienation or multiple succession under impartible cus- 
tom was added to the permanent common arable land of a township or 
remained separate and distinctive. The following account of practice in 
the Chiltern Hills considers this neglected corner of English field system 
studies. 


II 


The dissected chalk plateau that is the Chiltern Hills rises above the 
clay vales of Oxford and Aylesbury, and dips gently southeastwards for 
five to ten miles to the gravels of the Thames’ terraces and the Vale of St. 
Albans. The region extends nearly fifty miles from the Goring Gap north- 
east to the Hitchin Gap, and includes a variety of soils ranging from heavy 
clays to light sands. During the thirteenth century, as later, this was an 
area of arable farming with little meadow or pasture, but with extensive 
woods and wastes surviving, especially on the more broken relief of the 
southwest and centre of the Hills. A substantial proportion of the arable 
land was held in severalty, either in large demesne closes that were often 
50-100 acres or more, or in small tenant crofts of, on average, about five 
acres. Common arable, lying as half acre and one acre strips and open to 
common grazing, existed throughout the region, but it was most widespread 
in the northeast (east of the Gade valley) where less than half the plough- 
land of some townships was farmed in severalty. Within the individual 
common fields, strips were grouped into furlongs — although the fields 
themselves were small in comparison with the great open units of the vales 
below the escarpment — and there were often as many as ten, twenty or 
thirty common fields in one Hill township.* 

Thirteenth century Chiltern society was characterised by considerable 
personal freedom. A substantial body of free tenants existed in many 
manors, while villein services — assessed on the basis of customary units 
of tenure, especially the half virgate (25-30 acres) and the ferlingate (10- 
15 acres) — were relatively light and mainly seasonal. Free and bond 
tenants alike were able to alienate land from their holdings unobstructed 


4 Ὁ. Roden and A. R. H. Baker, “Field Systems of the Chiltern Hills and of Parts of Kent from 
the Late Thirteenth to the Early Seventeenth Century,” Transactions and Papers of the Institute of 
British Geographers, 38 (1966) 73-88. 


FRAGMENTATION OF LAND IN THE CHILTERN HILLS 927 


by lord or custom provided, in the case of villeins, all transactions took 
place through the manorial courts. As a result, an active peasant land mar- 
ket had developed by c. 1250, with individual tenants buying, selling and 
leasing a few acres, and a more flexible pattern of landholding had appeared. 
Some customary units were broken-up by sale from them; others were sup- 
plemented by the acquisition of strips and closes on lease or by purchase. 
Some men were able to build up substantial farms in this way, while others 
were consolidating their land. Average holding sizes differed considerably 
from manor to manor, the proportion of small tenants in particular varying 
according to local opportunities for their supplementary employment as 
wage labour. 

The relative prosperity of the thirteenth century gave way, in the first 
few decades of the following century, to a period of economic decline and 
social change that was to reach a peak after the epidemic of 1348-50, and 
that continued until early in the sixteenth century. With a contracting 
population, engrossment of properties was frequent, and the land market 
was dominated by transactions in complete holdings. Sale and exchange of 
a few acres revived only after c. 1550 as consolidation of common field 
strips increased.® 


II 


Primogeniture was practised throughout the Chilterns during the thir- 
teenth century and later. A single son inherited land held by the parent at 
death, and where there is detailed evidence it was clearly the eldest son.® 
Partible inheritance did occur, but only when, in the absence of male heirs, 
descent was to daughters: this was a feature of primogeniture in many parts 
of southeast England.” Custom also allowed the widow a dower claim of 
one third in her dead husband’s estate. Borough English, found east of the 


5 For a more detailed account of the social and economic background, see D. Roden, “Studies 
in Chiltern Field Systems,” unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of London, 1965, 271-6. 

§ Ὁ. Roden, “Inheritance Customs and Succession. to Land in the Chiltern Hills in the Thir- 
teenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries,” Journal of British Studies, 7 (1967) 3. 

? Ibid.; A. Hills, “Essex Manor Customs,” Essex Review, 51 (1942) 97; K. G. Fieling, “An Essex 
Manor in the Fourteenth Century,” English Historical Review, 26 (1911) 337; G. H. Fowler (ed.), 
“Roll of the Justices in Eyre at Bedford, 1202,” Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record 
Society, 1 (1933) 167, no. 74; G. H. Fowler (ed.), A Calendar of the Feet of Fines for Bedfordshire, 
Preserved in the Public Record Of fice, of the Reigns of Richard I, Fohn, and Henry IIL, Publications of the 
Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 6 (1919) 11, no. 19, 14, no. 34; G. H. Fowler (ed.), “Trac- 
tatus de Dunstaple et de Houcton,” Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 19 (1937) 
33, no. 53; P. Hyde, “The Winchester Manors at Witney and Adderbury, Oxfordshire, in the 
Later Middle Ages,” unpublished B. Litt. thesis, University of Oxford, 1955, 83. 


228 D.. RODEN 


Hitchin Gap in parts of Essex and eastern Hertfordshire,® was apparently 
unknown in the Hills. 

Historians have recently become increasingly aware that customs of 
impartibility were by no means as rigid as previously thought, and that the 
type of flexible arrangements described by G. C. Homans more than 25 
years ago were followed over a wide area. It is now recognised that by the 
thirteenth century, if not earlier, villeins often had considerable freedom 
of alienation which they frequently used to dispose of land to chosen suc- 
cessors or to determine its descent before they died.® Chiltern practice 
was similar. Although inheritance was usually undivided, actual succession 
to property could be far more complex because the Chiltern peasant was 
able to alienate his lands before death in any proportion and to anyone. 
Inheritance laws operated only in cases of intestacy, and through devices 
such as joint tenure and conditional surrender, which were widely adopted 
by 1300, a tenant might arrange the post mortem transmission of his proper- 
ty during his lifetime.1° 

In theory, there was no obstacle to the division of a holding by its occu- 
pant amongst all his children: partible succession to land was possible 
although impartible inheritance was the rule. But in fact, arrangements 
for the disposal of an entire patrimony between a number of relatives were 
rarely made. Large scale dismemberment of the average half virgate or 
ferlingate was impracticable during the thirteenth century, and when the 
basic family farm was granted away before death it was usually to a single 
successor. The small properties (often a cottage or a few acres) frequently 


8 A. Hills, of. cit., 100; L. L. Rickman, “Brief Studies in the Manorial and Economic History 
of Much Hadham,” Transactions of the East Herfordshire Archaeological Society, 8 (1928-33) 303; G. C. 
Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), 127; R. J. Faith, 
“Peasant Families and Inheritance Customs in Medieval England,” Agricultural History Review, 14 
(1966), 83-4, 

9 G. G. Homans, loc. cit. 1942, 127-131, 144-6, 152-3, 179, 204; F. B. Stitt, “The Manors of 
Great and Little Wymondley in the Later Middle Ages,” unpublished B. Litt. thesis, University 
of Oxford, 1951, 128; P. Hyde, of. cit., 83; M. M. Postan, op. cit., xxxix, xlix, lviii; J. A. Raftis, 
op. cit., 63, 65-6; B. Dodwell, of. cit., 63, 64. 

10 Joint holdings were usually between husband and wife or between parent and child, but also 
sometimes between brothers and sisters. The usual procedure was that a tenant surrendered land 
to the joint holding of himself and a partner, or related partners entered newly acquired land to- 
gether. When one died the property automatically passed to the other. Another advantage of 
conjoint holding was that payment of heriot was avoided. By conditional surrender a tenant 
transferred land to the person or persons he had chosen to succeed him, on condition that he be 
allowed to retain legal possession for the rest of his life. Although both wills and death-bed sur- 
renders were being made by peasants in the thirteenth century, they did not become common until 
the end of the following century. For details, see D. Roden, loc. cit. 1965, 167, 239, 285. 


FRAGMENTATION OF LAND IN THE CHILTERN HILLS 299 


given by parents to non-inheriting children had generally been acquired 
separately, and were only occasionally subtracted from the main holding." 


IV 


Wherever custom was such as to allow partibility in the descent of land, 
division of property was possible — a possibility that was strongest where 
partible inheritance occurred. This latter might take one of three forms: 
co-heirs could work a farm jointly, or they could apportion a parental 
holding amongst themselves, either allotting it complete unit by complete 
unit, or dividing each individual piece of land to ensure a fair distribution 
of all types and quality. Any of these three could apply whenever there 
were a number of claims on inherited land, circumstances that arose in the 
Chilterns only in the case of the widow’s dower right or when daughters 
were heirs. 

The widow usually released her life interests of one third to the holder 
of her dead husband’s property, or she held the land jointly with the inherit- 
ing son.!? Actual partition was rarely necessary because the dower claim was 
usually nothing more than a legal right over the whole estate. It seldom 
existed as a physical entity, but when it did fragmentation of land could 
follow. A three acre croft at King’s Walden was split into three pieces by 
the creation of a central dower strip of one acre, and subdivision was 
perpetuated when the inheriting son alienated his two pieces outside the 
family.18 Similar cases in the Vale of Aylesbury and in Essex show that this 
Chiltern example was by no means unique * More usually, however, any 
partition was reconsolidated by a grant from widow to inheritor in return 
for a money payment, as with another unit dividing part of the same patri- 
mony in King’s Walden.’® Failing this, dower land normally reverted to 
the main holding on the widow’s death. 

Property inherited by daughters was sometimes worked jointly and some- 
times shared out between the sisters. Four daughters of Robert de Studham 


11 For a more detailed assessment of Chiltern custom, see D. Roden, doc. cit. 1967, 1-11. 

12 As for example, in many of the dower cases recorded in M. W. Hughes (ed.), A Calendar of 
the Feet of Fines for the County of Buckingham, 7 Richard I to 44 Henry HI, Publications of the Records 
Branch of the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society, 4 (1942) (for 1940). 

13 British Museum (henceforth B. M.) Add. Ch. 35570, 35571. 

14 G. H. Fowler and J. G. Jenkins (eds.), Early Buckinghamshire Charters, Publications of the 
Records Branch of the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society, 3(1939) no. 30; R.E.G. Kirk (ed.), 
Feet of Fines for Essex, 1 (A. Ὁ. 1182-A. Ὁ. 1272), Essex Archaeological Society (Colchester, 1899- 
1910), 47, no. 261. 

15 B. M. Add. Ch. 35587. 


230 D. RODEN 


were freely transferring land as partners early in the thirteenth century,1® 
while the three women who held a virgate in Kensworth in 1299 were pro- 
bably sisters.1” On the other hand, agreements were drawn-up dividing the 
manorial demesnes of Great Gaddesden and Applehanger in Goring, in 
each case between two inheriting sisters. At Great Gaddesden, individual 
units of land, and even buildings, were to be halved, whereas the property 
at Goring was allotted wherever possible on the basis of complete fields and 
woods. It is not clear whether either of the proposed partitions was effected. 
There is, however, a strong suggestion in early thirteenth century Missen- 
den charters of actual fragmentation following partible inheritance by the 
four daughters of Geoffrey de Missenden. Woodland groves, arable closes, 
common field strips and meadows were all individually subdivided, in 
each case between two of the sisters, although much of this land was even- 
tually acquired by the husband of one of them.!® Such situations may have 
appeared more widely than has been recognised up till now — there were 
certainly conjoint holdings and subdivisions by heiress’s in Essex as well 
as in the Chilterns? — but there is no evidence that partition through in- 
heritance ever occurred on a really significant scale in the Hills, and certain- 
ly not of the creation of a field pattern of open strips in that way. 

There are other examples of the complete and systematic subdivision of 
entire farm holdings following agreement between two parties, but no 
reasons are given for them. Sometimes partition and apportionment was 
by a system of sun or shade division reminiscent of the Scandinavian sols- 
kifte. When a half virgate at Knebworth was halved in 1228, the claimant 
was given “that half which everywhere lies towards the sun”, while the 
part of a thirty acre holding in Chesham that was granted away in 1241 
was described as “a moiety of all lands as it lies everywhere in the fields 
towards the shade.”*! Casual application of sun division as a convenient 
and equitable method of partitioning a single holding stresses the danger of 
implying any significant correlation between English and Scandinavian 
field systems on the basis of terminology alone. 


16 B. M. Harl. MS. 1885, £. 13d; Hertfordshire Record Office 17465. 

17 Library of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s WD16 Liber I, f. 123d. 

48 Cal. Close Rolls, 1323-27, 293; T. R. Gambier-Parry (ed.), A Collection of Charters Relating to 
Goring, Streatley and the Neighbourhood, 1181-1546, Oxfordshire Record Series, 13 (1931), no. 162. 

19 J. G. Jenkins (ed.), The Cartulary of Missenden Abbey, Part 1, Publications of the Records Branch 
of the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society, 2 (1939), nos. 117, 119, 120, 122-5, 144-7, 149. 

39 Ἢ, F. Westlake (ed.), Hornchurch Priory. A Kalendar af Documents in the Possession of the Warden 
and Fellows of New College Oxford (London, 1923), no. 274; R. E. G. Kirk (ed.), Feet of Fines for 
Essex, 2 (A. Ὁ. 1272-A. Ὁ. 1326), Essex Archaeological Society, (Colchester, 1913-28), 49, no. 321. 

*1 Public Record Office CP 25(1)/84/12/114; M. W. Hughes, of. cit., 77. 


FRAGMENTATION OF LAND IN THE CHILTERN HILLS 93] 


Although descent of property arranged before death did not usually 
affect the integrity of the Chiltern half virgate or ferlingate tenement, it 
could lead to a division of land such as might have been produced by par- 
tible inheritance. Property granted to the joint holding of children was 
occasionally split between the partners: a three acre croft in Codicote re- 
mained subdivided for 26 years following a parental gift to a brother and 
sister, the two parts being reunited only after elaborate transactions. 
But it was more usual under such circumstances for one partner to release 
his rights to the other, or for the land to remain with co-tenants who shared 
any produce and profit, eventually passing to one on the death of the other.” 
Partition would have defeated the main purpose of joint tenure, which was 
to ensure descent to only one of the occupants.* Again children, and es- 
pecially unmarried daughters, were sometimes given a small plot in a close 
of the parental holding on which to build a cottage,?* or they might receive 
part of the family messuage, perhaps by some form of disposition before 
death.2* Property broken-up in these different ways was small in amount, 
and most usually only dwellings were involved. When a gift of arable land 
was made to a dependant from a peasant farm, it was generally an entire 
close or a few strips in a common field.?” Large scale fragmentation of a 
complete holding, such as might follow partible inheritance, rarely resulted 
from succession determined before death. 


ν 


The most frequent cause of the subdivision of individual units of land, 
as of the disintegration of customary tenements, was simple gift, sale or 


22 B. M. Stowe MS. 849, ff. 17, 28d, 32, 41d, 42. 

23 For example, a cottage at Codicote that was surrendered by Robert de London to. the joint 
holding of a son and a daughter later passed to another brother by sale and inheritance: ibid., 
ff. 32d, 37d, 78. Again, a two acre plot of land was given by Peter Doget, a Codicote villein, to 
his two daughters who each received an acre; but one daughter died almost immediately and so 
the other entered the share: ibid., ff. 16d. 17. 

34 The role of joint tenure was thus very different in the Chilterns to that in an area of partible 
inheritance, where it was frequently adopted as an alternative to fragmentation on the death 
of a tenant. ; 

25 For example, Amicia Okslade of Ibstone built two cottages for two daughters in 1344: 
Merton College MS 5221. : 

26 For example, at Coticote Matilda Synoth surrendered half her messuage and curtilage to 
her daughter on condition that she herself be allowed continued possession of this half until she 
died. When she died, nine years later, half of the property thus passed to the daughter, while a 
son inherited the other half in the normal way: B. M. Stowe MS 849, ff. 52, 63. 

2? Ὁ, Roden, loc. cit., 1967, 6-7. 


232 D. RODEN 


lease not necessarily connected with descent of property. The break-up of 
a holding in this way was usually a gradual and piecemeal process quite 
different from the immediate and systematic partitioning that might ac- 
company a joint inheritance. Thomas le Driver, a Codicote villein, suc- 
ceeded his father in the family half virgate in 1285, and during the next 
forty years he reduced it by more than eleven acres surrendered in fifteen 
transactions. There were also eight leases from the property for periods 
ranging from five to sixteen years. No addition was made to the farm, the 
remaining part of which was finally surrendered by Thomas to his daughter 
in 1325.28 Actual fractionation occurred when a compact unit was alienated 
to two or more tenants separately, or when only part of a single unit was 
granted away. Land of all types was involved: woods were divided into 
blocks that were sometimes fenced or ditched-off from each other; assarts 
were occasionally broken-up by the granting away of parcels within them 
to different men (see fig. 1 at end of article) ;3° while a common field strip 
in a single tenancy was sometimes split by surrender of a part of it.*! But 
it was the established arable closes that were fragmented most frequently. 
At Caddington in 1299, a 34 acre croft which had formerly been in one 
holding lay as three parcels each belonging to separate occupants, while 
a 5% acre close at Kensworth was likewise divided in three.22 Such features 


38. B. M. Stowe MS 849, ff. 18, 19, 19d, 20, 20d, 21d, 22, 24, 25, 25d, 28d, 30d, 35d, 37, 37d, 
38, 39d, 40d, 45, 47, 48, 49. 

39 For example, c. 1195 the nuns of Goring were granted part of the grove of Chalcora (T. R. 
Gambier-Parry, op. cit., no. 2), while at Missenden a grant by Ingram de Betun to the Abbey in- 
cluded an additional piece of his wood of Peterleystone, and Ralf de Scaccario divided his wood 
called Senreden, on Kingshill, by granting away part of it to a Wycombe merchant (J. G. Jen- 
kins, of. cit., nos. 137, 151). There are numerous other examples, and by the late thirteenth cen- 
tury some men were enlarging and consolidating woodland holdings through the acquisition, by 
purchase and exchange, of wood next to that they already held, in the same way as others were 
consolidating holdings of arable land (D. Roden, “Woodland and its Management in the Medie- 
val Chilterns,” Forestry, 41 [1968], 63). 

®0 For example, at Caddington the eight acre assart owned by John Poleyn had, by 1299, been 
divided into three parcels of three acres, four acres and one acre leased to separate tenants; an 
eighteen acre assart called Le Rudyng had probably been partitioned in this or a similar way — it 
had once been in a single tenure but by 1299 lay in eight pieces all held by different men; and 
William Hakeny held two acres and six acres in a new assart that had formerly been one holding: 
Library of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s WD16, Liber I, ff. 116, 116d, 117d. 

31 For example, at Codicote both Reginald Aleyn and Thomas atte Pirie surrendered land in 
Ash Field while retaining part of each parcel: B. M. Stowe MS 849, f. 44. There were similar 
divisions at Welwyn and Kensworth: Hertfordshire Record Office 591 17, 591200, 59124; B. M. 
Add. Ch. 19939, 19940. 

32 The closes had previously been held by Ralph Hicheman and John le Seler respectively: 
Library of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s WD16 Liber I, ff. 116d, 122d. 


FRAGMENTATION OF LAND IN THE CHILTERN HILLS 933 


were by no means unique to the Chiltern Hills. They abounded in the sur- 
rounding regions in both assart and long cultivated land,** and they have 
often been noted further afield in various parts of medieval England.* 
Rarely, however, has their form and formation been discussed in any detail, 
and attempts to assess their actual significance in local field systems are few. 

Tenurial fragmentation of enclosed fields through partial or diverse alien- 
ation could take one of several forms. At Codicote, some closes were 
leased-out or sold in parcels to more than one tenants at the same time;*° 
others were released by one tenant to another in a number of pieces and 
over a period of years ;** while some tenants surrendered only part of a close, 
retaining a portion for their own use.*’ Very often two or more of these 
methods contributed to the break-up of an enclosed field. Walterscroft 
was first subdivided by sale of two pieces within it to another holder, and 
then it was further fragmented with the release, over four years, of another 
seven parcels each adjacent to the other, to a third party.** Division of 
Bromecroft resulted from piecemeal leasing and sale to two men during a 
three year period (Table I); while particularly complicated transactions 
involving both free and villein tenants were responsible for the dismember- 
ment of Halecroft.2® There is evidence of similar forms of partitioning in 


33 For example: W. H. Turner and H. Ο, Coxe (eds.), Calendar of Charters and Rolls Preserved 
in the Bodleian Library, (Oxford, 1878), 28, 29; G. H. Fowler and J. Godber (eds.), The Cartulary 
of Bushmead Priory, Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 22 (1945) (for 
1940), nos. 71, 85; J. Godber (ed.), The Cartulary of Newnham Priory, Publications of the Bedford- 
shire Historical Record Society, 43, (1963), nos. 386, 662, 671; A. F. Westlake, op. cit., nos. 370, 
394, 443, 524. 

34 For example, by R. H. Hilton in Leicestershire and the West Midlands: R. H. Hilton in 
W. G. Hoskins (ed.), A History of the County of Leicester, 2, (London, 1954), 166, and The Stone- 
leigh Leger Book, Publications of the Dugdale Society, 24 (1960), p. tvu1. Leasing also produced 
subdivided fields in Kent: J. L. M. Gulley, “The Wealden Landscape in the Early Seventeenth 
Century and its Antecedents,” unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of London, 1960, 355; 
and A, R. H. Baker, “Field Systems in the Vale of Holmesdale,” Agricultural History Review, 14 
(1966) 4, 7, 9. Alienated demesne was sometimes divided up on Ramsey estates, in this case by 
private agreements between the co-tenants: J. A. Raftis, op. cit., 26. 

35 During the seven years 1307 to 1314 Godfrey Whitecock leased-out most of his Whitecokes- 
croft in four pieces (three of one acre and one of three roods) to two men for periods ranging from 
eight to twelve years (B. M. Stowe MS 849, ff. 31, 33d, 35d, 36), and between 1346 and 1348 
the five acre Moriscescroft was released as thirteen parcels to two tenants — it was back in a 
single holding by 1374 (ibid., ff. 72d, 73, 103). 

36 In 1316 Alice Thurbern surrendered her two acre croft to Simon de Childemere in four 
separate plots: ibid., ff. 38d, 39, 40. 

37 John le Reveson leased-out half his three acre Hamstalecroft for twelve years: ibid., f. 38d. 

38 Tbid., ff. 46, 46d, 48d, 51. 

39 In 1283 Walter atte Strate, a villein, bought 4 4 acres in Halecroft as five different pieces 
from Thomas atte Wike, the free tenant who owned the whole close (B. M. Add. MS 40734, ff. 


234 D. RODEN 


many other Chiltern townships in the thirteenth and early fourteenth cen- 
turies, often producing a far more complex pattern of open parcels and 
strips than division through either inheritance or descent of land arranged 
before death.*° Plough ridges, which provided ready-made physical units 
for land transfers in the common fields,“ were also sometimes used as a 
basis for the tenurial fragmentation of enclosed fields. A grant in Little 
Missenden, for example, consisted of three selions in Fulkescroft.” 
Subdivision was, in many closes, only temporary, the individual parcels 
being reintegrated on the expiry of leases or because one of the tenants 
had gradually bought-up the entire field? Crawley Croft in Codicote 
passed through the complete cycle of partition and reconsolidation over 
a period of 54 years. Starting in 1282, small plots were alienated from the 
close in seven transactions, and 44 years later a ditch was made to separate 
the two main tenures within it. During the next ten years one tenant ob- 
tained land on both sides of his own land, in much the same way as common 
field strips were amalgamated, and the croft returned to a single holding. 
Other closes, especially larger fields where land, had been sold to a number 
of men, remained subdivided, with the different units either surviving for 
a while as open pieces or being fenced-off to form a network of smaller 
closes. At Kingshill, where fields were being partitioned through gift and 
sale before the end of the twelfth century,*® some parcels formed in this 
way were undoubtedly enclosed at the time of division or soon afterwards: 
a piece that a tenant granted away in his Suthfeld (it extended the full 
length of the field) had been marked-out by a newly made ditch,*’ while 


18-21d). Another two villeins, Hugo Cok and Roger Poleyn, held the remaining land in the field 
(ibid., ff. 18, 18d). The former exchanged his five roods with Walter atte Strate, while the latter 
leased his single acre to Walter (ibid., f. 18; B. M. Stowe MS 849, f. 19). By 1287 the entire close 
seems to have been once more in a single holding, for Walter then surrendered “a croft called 
Halecroft” enclosed with hedges and ditches to one of his daughters (ibid, f. 18d). 

40 Evidence for Abbots Langley and Bramfield is especially detailed: Library of Sidney Sussex 
College James MS 1; Hertfordshire Record Office 40702-3. 

41 The average common arable strip of half an acre may usually have ephaniined a single plough 
ridge, but strips also often consisted of a number of ridges: D. Roden, Joc. cit. 1965, 332. 

42 J. G. Jenkins, of. cit., no. 142. 

43 For example, Moricescroft and Halecroft in Codicote: vide supra. 

44 B. M. Stowe MS 849, ff. 16d, 32, 37, 38d, 46d, 48, 48d; 49d, 60, 61d. 

45 Thus Ruding Field in Codicote was held by a number of tenants at the end of the thirteenth 
century following surrender of land within it by Thomas atte Wike. The separate existence of 
some of these pieces was perpetuated by continuing alienation — Robert Smith, for example, 
granted away his holding to four men — and the field still contained unfenced units thirty years 
later: B. M. Stowe MS 849, ff. 32, 38, 47, 51, 54, 88d, 89, 100d; Add. MS 40734, ff. 19, 19d, 25d. 

46 M. W. Hughes, of. cit., 8. 

47 J. G. Jenkins, of. cit., no. 171. 


FRAGMENTATION OF LAND IN THE CHILTERN HILLS 935 


a portion of land held by Geoffrey Taylifer in two fields belonging to Mis- 
senden Abbey was hedged-off from the Abbey’s section.” 

Open units within subdivided closes were probably fenced for exactly 
the same reason that common field strips were later enclosed, namely to 
prevent grazing by livestock not belonging to the tenant. Pasturing in 
common was certainly practised by the occupiers of at least some fragment- 
ed closes. A Bramfield villein was allowed, in 1332, to enclose land in Clay 
Field in order to free it from the right of common pasture claimed by Elias 
Thurston — the Thurston family had earlier been disposing of parcels in 
a Clay Croft which had once been in their sole possession’? — and it was 
actually stipulated in a King’s Walden grant of two units in a three acre 
croft that these should be held in severalty.*° 

A. GC. Chibnall has shown how at Sherington, in northern Buckngham- 
shire, demesne ploughland in severalty was transformed into two large com- 
mon fields and added to the ancient common arable of the township (itself 
in two fields), following twelfth century subinfeudation of the main fee in 
the parish and later piecemeal granting of common rights over it.** In the 
Chilterns, too, some smaller and later common fields may have been formed 
by a lord letting out freshly cleared land to dependent tenants, and a seven- 
teenth century common arable area in Berkhamsted called Twelve Acres 
was apparently undivided and held in severalty 250 years earlier.** These 
examples were, however, exceptional. Most tenurially divided closes in 
the Hills were quite distinct from common fields there, although it is often 
difficult to distinguish the two from descriptions of land alone. Parcels in 
the closes had neither the regular size nor systematic organisation into 
furlongs of the common field strips; subdivided closes were usually much 
smaller than the common fields — they were split into five to ten pieces 
at most; and a pattern of open strips rarely survived in them for more than 
a few years, whereas the common fields remained more or less intact for 
several centuries. Certainly there is very little evidence that closes frag- 
mented as a result of either succession to property or ordinary alienation 


48 Ibid., no. 187. 

49 Hertfordshire Record Office 40703. 

50 B. M. Add. Ch. 35571. 

51 A, C. Chibnall, Sherington. Fiefs and Fields of a Buckinghamshire Village (Cambridge, 1965), 
108-110. 

52 BE. C. Vollans, “The Evolution of Farm-Lands in the Central Chilterns in the Twelfth and 
Thirteenth Centuries,” Transactions and Papers of the Institue of British Geographers, 26 (1959), 233; 
D. Roden, Joc. cit., 1965, 300. 

53 B. M. Lansd. MS 905, ff. 110, 113; Public Record Office SC11/271-2. 


236 D. RODEN 


were ever added to the common arable of a Chiltern township on any signi- 
ficant scale, or were ever regarded individually as common fields. The 
actual process of common field formation in the Hills remains a mystery. 

Divided closes of all types appear to have been most numerous and 
complex during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. They were 
subsequently less widespread. Holding dismemberment also became less 
marked in the second half of the fourteenth century: many more complete 
tenements were changing hands, and extensive farm engrossment occurred. 
But fractionation of complete holdings and individual enclosed fields alike 
did continue on a smaller scale for several hundred years afterwards. An 
entire farm at Ibstone was partitioned between Merton College and Thomas 
London in 1451. Two surveyors were employed, and scrupulous care was 
taken to ensure an accurate division and equitable apportionment of land 
of all types. Smaller crofts and woodland groves were halved, whereas 
the larger fields were split into a number of units referred to as “furlongs”, 
each of which was halved longitudinally between the two parties. South 
Field, for example, was subdivided into six pieces (that is the halves of three 
furlongs), while White Field was divided into the eight halves of four fur- 
longs. No reason was given for the partition.* Again, a late fifteenth 
century rental for King’s Walden shows two demesne fields of 9 4 acres and 
19 acres leased-out amongst three and four tenants respectively.* 

In sixteenth and seventeenth century surveys and terriers and in eigh- 
teenth and early nineteenth century maps, closes of all sizes appear as 
divided into two or more unfenced units: sometimes individual parcels had 
been rented to different tenants;°* sometimes an entire field was held by 
one farm, but was partly under grass or was under two crops;°’and sometimes 
a field in a single holding was occupied under more than one tenure.5* The 
creation of divided closes was thus a continuing feature of the Chiltern 
field pattern. By the seventeenth century, however, there were rarely 


54 Merton College MS 5250. 

55 B. M. Add. Ch. 35945. One of the fields contained both arable and pasture. 

56 As in closes called Hodginlane and Cloudinale, named in a Great Gaddesden survey c. 
1600: Hertfordshire Record Office 1162. 

57 Marsh Farm in Great Gaddesden included one field containing grass and arable in 1740, 
and Old House Farm in the same parich had two fields divided in this way in 1761: Hertfordshire 
Record Office 15596, 15598. William Strode of Medmenham cultivated both oats and barley 
in one close of four acres in 1574: Lincolnshire Record Office Inv. 56/309. 

58 For example, in 1697 most of North Field in Little Gaddesden was the freehold of a Mr. 
Jarman, but there were also four acres of glebe in it. Mr. Jarman rented the glebe holding, so 
obtaining occupation of the entire field under two tenures: Lincolnshire Record Office AT15, 
AT36. 


FRAGMENTATION OF LAND IN THE CHILTERN HILLS 237 


more than five or six within a manor or township,*® and most were similar 
in appearance to the increasingly numerous relics of common arable enclo- 
sure — groups of a few strips that had been fenced-off but were still to be 
finally consolidated. By the end of the sixteenth century, too, many of the 
large demesne fields of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and also some 
of the bigger tenant closes, had been permanently broken into smaller en- 
closed units, although the reverse process, close amalgamation, was also 
occurring.®, 


Vi 


It is clear from the account above that, by the thirteenth century, hol- 
dings and fields in the Chiltern Hills were being subdivided between diffe- 
rent tenants in a number of ways and for a variety of reasons. Of these, 
inheritance customs were least prominent: the prevailing primogeniture 
allowed little direct scope for multiple descent of property. Divided suc- 
cession — which most usually arose from some arrangement made by a 
tenement holder during his lifetime as to its disposal after his death — could 
produce land fragmentation; but the infrequent partitioning that took place 
under such circumstances should not be overemphasised, for transmission 
to a single son was by far the commonest practice. Alienation through or- 
dinary sale and lease was more important: previously compact units were 
quite often split up into pieces held by a number of occupiers and customary 
farm holdings were dispersed amongst many tenants. Closes subdivided 
tenurially in these ways were of no more than minor significance in local 
field patterns. They were usually short-lived, the different parcels either 
becoming reconsolidated into single ownership within a few years or being 
individually fenced to form separate closes; and although sometimes grazed 
in common by the parceners, they almost always remained distinct from the 
much more stable pattern of permanent common arable. The main trend 
within the common fields, by the thirteenth century, was towards strip 
amalgamation rather than any further disintegration.* 


53 For example, there were three subdivided closes in the manor of Great Hampden in 1741: 
Map in the Hampden Estate Office. 

60 As, for example, in Berkhamsted in 1607, where two demesne fields of 80 and 160 acres had 
recently been broken-up into sixteen closes, and where tenant closes were also being amalgamated. 
and divided: Public Record Office E315/365. 

* The author acknowledges a grant from the Central Research Fund of the University of Lon- 
don towards the cost of his research. 


238 D. RODEN 


TABLE 1 


THE DIVISION OF BROMECROFT BY SALE AND LEASE 
(folio references are to B. M. Stowe Ms. 849) 


Granter Date Amount and Nature of Transfer Recipient Ref. 
John le Reveson 1316 1%a.— 12 year lease Roger le Helder £.38d 
« « 1316 4a. — 6 crop lease « « £.40d 
« « 1321 14a.— surrendered (land of John « « £.44 
on both sides) 
« « 1322 a. surrendered (between the « « 46 
land of Roger & John) 
« « 1322 4a. surrendered (between the « « £.46 
land of Roger & John) 
« « 1323 la. surrendered (between the land Roger May £.46 
of John & Roger le Helder) 
« « 1328 la. surrendered « « £.46d 
« « 1324 la. surrendered (between the land « « £.48 


of Roger May & the common heath) 


Fic. 1. Suppivision OF AN ASSART IN Kunc’s WALDEN 


I. Grant by Robert de Estholt to Robert de Hurne, c. 1250, of 24 acres including “the two 
acres which lie in my large croft in the old assart between my demesne lands on both sides; 
whereof one end extends into my new assart and the other end extends onto the land that was 
Mathew’s.” (B. M. Add. Ch. 35614). 


Robert’s 
demesne (la.) 
Mathew’s 2a. of the great croft The new 
land in the old assart assart 
Robert’s 


demesne (la.) 


II. Grant by John de Beyford to Richard de la Hurne, in 1266-7, of 4 5 acres including “two 
acres of the four acres lying together in the old assart between the land of Sylvester de Preston 
and Walter Carpentarius; one end extends onto the new assart.” (B. M. Add. Ch. 35577). 


Sylvester de 
Preston (1a.) 
Mathew’s 2a. of the 4a. lying together The new 
land in the old assart assart 
Walter 


Carpentarius (1a.) 


Summary:— Some, if not all, of the land in the old assart had been enclosed into a croft of four 
acres, which was subsequently divided into three units by the transfer of a central piece of two 
acres to Robert de Hurne. By the time the second grant was made, land on both sides of the two 
acres had been alienated to different holders (Sylvester de Preston and Walter Carpentarius). 


University of Khartoum, Sudan. 


Prancesc Eiximenis on Royal Officials 
A View of Fourteenth Century Aragon 


JILL R. WEBSTER 


HE aim of this article is not to give a complete list of all the administra- 
tive positions in the Catalano-Aragonese Federation in the fourteenth 
century, but to show the historical importance of the Dotzé del Crestid of 
Francesc Eiximenis. A Catalan Friar Minor whose dates are approxima- 
tely 1340-1409, Eiximenis wrote prolifically, his main work being an 
encyclopaedia on the Christian life, bearing the title El Crestia, the Chris- 
tian. He intended to write thirteen books but only four are extant and it 
is the last of these — Book twelve in the original scheme — with which 
we are concerned here. Most of this is still unpublished. 

In the twelfth book Eiximenis uses many well-known sources, both ec- 
clesiastical and secular, ranging from Aristotle through Alfonso X of 
Castile, St. Thomas Aquinas and John of Salisbury, to mention four of 
the most important. More specifically, however, when referring to the 
officials of the kingdom he is relying not only on Alfonso X but on Peter IV 
of Aragon, who drew up a series of rules for court functionaries, known as 
Ordinacions. Many of these Ordinacions have been published by Bofarull* 
and it is interesting to see how on many occasions Eiximenis has copied 
them almost literally. 

Bofarull omitted the document dealing with the requirements for and 
duties of the Constable, probably because the manuscript was in a very 
poor state of legibility.2 Quotations in this article therefore have been 
taken directly from the manuscript and have been partly reconstructed 
from the Friar’s text which must have been written with Peter IV’s Ordi- 
nacié on the Constable at hand. The latter was dated at Valencia, 25th 
September, 1386 and whilst a large part of Eixemenis’ book was written 
by that date, it is unlikely that it was completed before 1391. This date 
serves to indicate the exact period which will be described here. 


1 “Ordinacions fetes per lo molt alt senyor en Pere Terc (referred to here as Peter IV by his 
position as King of Aragon), rei d’Arag6 sobre lo regiment de tots los oficials de la sua cort”, ed. 
Prdéspero de Bofarull, Procesos de las antiguas cories y parlamentos de Catalufia, Aragon y Valencia, 5 
(Barcelona, 1850) ; except that relating to the Constable, which can be found in MS 622 of the 
Archivo del Real del Reino de Valencia, fols. 146-158". 

2 Op. cit. Note 1. 


940 J. R. WEBSTER 


The Dotzé del Crestid classifies the officials of the King’s household under 
three main headings: — 
“firstly... those who act as ministers of justice. 


Secondly... those who act as advisers. 
Thirdly those who act as the King’s personal attendants.”? 


This classification will be followed here, but before describing the individual 
offices, Eiximenis makes certain general statements which should be borne 
in mind: — 
“laws should [be established as they are] necessary to the good ruling of the 
kingdom and principality of the overlord.’ 


All officials must swear at the beginning of their term of office that they 
will not receive bribes of money or in kind: — 


“under penalty of penury and of being declared infamous for evermore and 
of being deprived forthwith of their office and all benefits.”> 


They should be appointed for one year only at the end of which “a man 
ordained for that purpose”® should declare before the Council assem- 
bled in the Town Hall the good and bad things the officials had done to 
the Community during that time. Such a declaration should not be 
prejudiced and should consist of a recitation of facts. The officials should 
be paid adequate salaries but Eiximenis considers it advantageous if they 
have private incomes, as they will not then be tempted to accept bribes. 
The salaries should be taken from the common funds (Comd) and not from 
money collected by the various officials. To summarise, Eiximenis was 
anxious to stress the importance of moral integrity in those who were to 
hold positions of importance. 

Primary importance is given to the Chancellor whom Eiximenis regards 
as the first officer of the realm after the King. Alfonso X puts him in 
second place, giving the first to the King’s chaplain. The Chancellor, 
according to the Ordinacions of Peter IV, should be an archbishop or bishop, 
who is a doctor of law and Eiximenis agrees that he should be “a learned, 
famous and conscientious ecclesiastic.”’ He is called the Head of Justice 
because on him should rest all justice and he should be firm and incapable 


3 Dotzé del Crestid, Ch. 679, MS 167, Valencia Cathedral Archives “primerament... aquells 
qui servexen a justicia. Segonament aquells qui servexen a consell. Tergament aquells qui 
servexen a la perssona del princep.” 

4 Op. cit., Ch. 672, “leys... necessaries al bon regiment del regne o del principat del senyor.” 

> Op. cit., Ch. 672, “sots pena de pentiri e de ésser infamis per a tostemps e de continent sien 
prifats de lur offici e de tot benefici.” 

ὁ Op. cit. Ch. 672, “hom a acd deputat”. 

? Op. cit., Ch. 680, “hom ecclesiastich entenent e conscienciat e famés.” 


FRANCESG EIXIMENIS ON ROYAL OFFICIALS 241 


of being moved by anyone regardless of their importance. He is the king’s 
chief minister, president of the Council, the Audiéncia (tribunal of justice) 
and the Chancellory and should consequently receive a salary which will 
free him from financial worry. Eiximenis obviously thinks that Peter IV 
does not give sufficient importance to the moral qualities, and the Friar’s 
views in this connection have been dealt with by Probst. To summarise 
his observations on this office: briefly, the Chancellor must be honest, 
merciful, pleasant, accessible, without ostentation or pride and it is prefera- 
ble that he be chosen for his wealth so that he will be above temptation 
and less likely to show partiality. Alfonso X makes no mention of the 
Chancellor’s position as Lord Chief Justice but this is emphasised by Eixi- 
menis and brought out by Probst in his comments on the Chancellor. 
Probst develops the question of justice by setting out the system used in 
the oriental empire, under Theodosius II, taken by Eiximenis as his ideal.® 

Four courts are recommended according to the gravity of the matter, 
the Tribunal de les coses menudes (Magistrate’s Court), the Justicia Civil 
(Civil Tribunal), the Justicia Criminal (Criminal Court) and the Tribunal 
del Princep (Prince’s Court) which would serve as a court of appeal. This 
latter would also deal with differences between nobles and peasants and 
would have twelve counsellors. Each tribunal would be presided over by 
a judge and have one assessor. The Friar then gives twelve things a judge 
should consider before pronouncing a sentence and the procedure to be 
followed in the hearing of witnesses. Since these have been quoted in full 
by Probst, it would seem superfluous to repeat them here. The Friar, 
however, goes on to describe just how justice was administered in the Cata- 
lano-Aragonese Federation and the officials of importance under the Chan- 
cellor or Lord Chief Justice. 

Under him are the veguers (ordinary judges) and bailles (magistrates) 
in Catalonia and Valencia (zalmedinas and justicias in Aragon). The former 
presided over local tribunals and were appointed by the king with the 
approval of the rulers of the town, whilst the batiles dealt with all cases 
concerning the royal patrimony or the Jewish and Moorish communities. 

The Constable, who is not given any placing by Eiximenis, is the head 
of the army and generally known as the Mestre de la Cavalleria (Master of 
the Cavalry) in the Catalano-Aragonese Federation. According to the 
Statutes of Aragon this position should be occupied by one of the king’s 
sons who should also be a knight. Neither Eiximenis nor Peter IV insist 


8 J. H. Probst, “Francesch Eiximenig, ses idées politiques et sociales,” Revue Hispanique, 39 
(1917) 1-82. 
9 Idem. 


242 J. R. WEBSTER 


on this point but both emphasise that if no member of royalty is available, 
a man of noble lineage may be chosen. The officer had previously been 
called senescal in Catalonia, but Peter IV wished him to be known in the 
future as Constable. As head of the army, the Constable in the words of 
Peter IV had “endless work and important missions”!° and consequently 
deserved fitting remuneration. The way in which this should be given is 
particularly interesting, as it is evident that Eiximenis has copied the rele- 
vant part of Peter IV’s Ordinacio almost word for word. This particular 
document is still unpublished, as already indicated, and is in a very bad 
state of preservation, so that Eiximenis’ remarks enable otherwise illegible 
words to be deciphered." The fact that Eiximenis has so literally copied 
his authority on this occasion would lead the scholar to suppose this to be 
the case in other instances, where the source is not so readily available. 

In addition to all military gains the Constable was to receive one thou- 
sand sols (obsolete monetary unit) per hundred households in any town 
where a siege had lasted more than fifteen days. If the siege were successful 
and the place captured, the Constable was entitled to one twentieth of 
all booty with the exception of arms and food. Two thirds of all fines or 
taxes levied on the army were to be for the account of the Constable and 
he had the right to all horses and arms of knights conquered in closed 
battle. All these stipulations follow very closely Peter IV’s Ordinacié of 
25th September, 1386. 

Under the Constable were two other Officials, the Alguatzir and the 
Mostassaf. The former is rated by Eiximenis as the third official in the 
kingdom and stress is laid on the fact that he is the lowest executor of 
Justice. His functions too have been fairly fully described by Probst who 
mentions that his duty is to punish all wrongdoers in the interests of peace 
and prosperity within the Community.” If he sees that he is ordered to 


10 V. note 1, MS 622, “treballs infinits e les missions grans”. 

Ἢ Dotzé del Crestia, Ch. 238, “Que lo dit conestable haja de tots guanys de cavalcades que-s 
faran per homens de la dita host, axi de cavall com de peu, ¢o és hajen de les cinch parts perta- 
nyents al rey les dues parts e lo rey n’aja les tres. Αχί mateix de la batalla campal que no sia 
reyal 6 de entrades de lochs dels enemichs de tot guany alrey pertanyent d’aquestes coses ell deu 
haver una part de la quinta qui-n pertany al rey.” 

Ms. 622, v. Note 1. 
“Que'l dit conestable haja de tots guanys de cavalcades que faran per homens de la dita host, 
axf de cavall com de peu, e a saber de la quinta part pertanyent a nos [i. e. the King] les dues 
parts axi que a nos ne haja (?) les tres. De tot guany que no farem de la batalla campal que no 
sia reyal com encara de tots guanys qui-s fehen ( ?) per entrades de lochs dels enemichs, ¢o és del 
quint pertanyent a nos, elo dit guany la guinta part ax{ que del dit host nos ne hajam quatre parts 
e ell la huna.” 

12 Op. cit., Note 8. 


FRANCESG EIXIMENIS ON ROYAL OFFICIALS 943 


disobey these principles, he should endeavour to prevent the execution 
of the command, as being against truth and justice. Greater stress is laid 
on his powers of executing civil justice but it is clear that his jurisdiction 
extended to war. He was to receive one third of the fines and taxes imposed 
on the army, with the exception of those imposed on merchants and retailers; 
and these latter were to be for the Mostassaf. He also was to receive one 
twentieth of the king’s share of the cavalcades (cavalcades) once the Con- 
stable’s part had been deducted. In the Ordinacié outlining the duties of 
the Alguatzir, however, no mention is made of his activites in wartime. 
Since these are included in the Ordinacié on the Constable, it would appear 
that Eiximenis only consulted this latter document. He does not even con- 
sider it important to mention the Alguatzir’s civil duties which occupied the 
greater part of his time. 

A similar discrepancy is evident in the case of the Mostassaf who is 
described by Soldevila as a municipal magistrate engaged in inspecting 
markets, weights and measures.’ Eiximenis, whilst corroborating this, 
stresses that in fact his sphere of activity was the army and this latter fact 
is borne out by Peter IV’s Ordinacié regarding the Alguatzir. The Friar 
mentions that the Mostassaf is elected by the Constable and “has by right 
of office one third of all goods and confiscations of false merchandise in- 
curred by members of the army or accruing through the army... and has 
in addition the bodies and tongues of all animals cut up in the army to be 
sold.” 

It has already been mentioned that one third of all taxes and fines im- 
posed on the army was to be shared between the Alguatzir and the Mos- 
tassaf. In addition the latter was entitled to one third of all benefits ac- 
cruing from punishments and sentences imposed on merchants and re- 
tailers. 

Eiximenis is very explicit about how prisoners should be treated and 
stipulates that men of an honourable station in life should be treated 
accordingly, being subjected to the least possible discomfort. The method 
of procedure is amusing in itself: — 

“It used to be the custom that if the Alguatzir should ride forth and take a man 
of honour that he say to him, ‘Sir, I would like to speak with you a while. 


Mount this mule and we will talk at my house’, and he would make him ride 
on some beast provided for the purpose and no-one would perceive that the 


13 Ferran Soldevila, Historia de Espafta, 2 (Barcelona, 1952). 

14 Qp. cit., note 3, Bk. 1, (1484), Gh. 238, “haja per dret de son offici lo ter¢ de tots los bens € 
confiscacions de falses mercaderies en que seran encorreguts aquells de la host o qui vendran per 
la host... e haja encara los cors e les lengues de tota béstia qui-s desfaga en la host per vendre.” 


9244. J. R. WEBSTER 


man was a prisoner. On arrival at his house he would say to him, ‘mount 
your mule or horse and come with me a while.” 


If he were nota man of honour, then the Alguatzir would ask him to go with 
him but no man would be ill-treated, unless he were a dangerous criminal 
or expected to escape. The outlook of an ecclesiastic is bound to differ 
from that of a temporal ruler and Eiximenis shows this by recommending 
that prisoners be consoled and comforted in prison. By treating them with 
compassion, the Alguatzirs would make lifelong friends and the wrongdoers 
would remember their kindness with gratitude, he thinks. As far as the 
housing of prisoners was concerned, this should be according to status and 
men and women should be separated. Non-Christians should also be kept 
apart from Christians, all being treated with justice and courtesy. In all 
aspects of justice a love of God and his mercy was to be kept in mind. 

After the officers of justice, Eiximenis places in order of importance those 
who personally served the king, such as the Chamberlain (camarlench) , 
Majordomo and the Mestre Racional (in charge of financial affairs). This 
order is to be found in the Ordinacions of Peter IV, the above officials being 
placed second, fourth and fifth respectively. Here a difference of emphasis 
is observed, in that the King describes the duties of the Chamberlain in 
considerable detail, whereas Eiximenis has very little to say about them. 
This is understandable since the King would naturally be more concerned 
over his own personal attendants than the Friar. The latter’s interests 
would necessarily lie in a broader field and would be related to the con- 
tribution made by the body of officials to the prosperity of the Community. 
He describes the Chamberlain as the King’s personal adviser and counsel- 
lor, who because he is constantly at his side, can do him more good or harm. 
If there are any secrets such as personal defects or diseases, which the King 
wishes to keep secret from the public, the Chamberlain will be aware of 
them, as his position is that of private and confidential secretary. Peter IV 
states that there should be two chamberlains, so that one can take over 
from the other in case of sickness or excessive work. One, however, would 
be in charge and the King goes into careful detail as to when and how the 
two chamberlains should go about their duties. 

The Majordomo, who is given fourth place in order of importance, is 
also concerned with the king’s person. Probst does not comment at any 


1 Op. cit., note 3, Ch. 794, “Costuma solia ésser que si Valguatzir cavalcas e presés a negun 
hom de honor que li diguera axf, ‘N’aytal, yo he a parlar ab vos un poch. Pujats en aquexa mula 
e parlarem a casa mia’, e feya’l cavalcar en qualque béstia que ja aguera presta a agé, e negun 
no percebia que ]’om aquell fos estat pres. Vinguera a sa casa e li diguera, ‘muntats en vostra 
mul 0 cavall, e venits ab mi un poch’. 


FRANCESC EIXIMENIS ON ROYAL OFFICIALS 245 


length about this official but stresses the main points. The Majordomo is 
in charge of all table and culinary arrangements and Alfonso X describes 
him as “an official without whom no money should be spent in the king’s 
house. 16 

It was customary in the Catalano-Aragonese Federation to have three 
majordomos, one for Aragon, one for Valencia and Majorca and a third 
for Catalonia. These officers were chosen from the nobility, nobles cavallers 
(noble knights), and were responsible for the good health and complexion 
of the sovereign. They were to be guided in this by the advice given by 
the prince’s doctors or any other competent person. This was a very im- 
portant aspect of their duties, as on them depended in many cases the 
lives of the members of the royal family. It was not uncommon for people 
to be poisoned and Eiximenis comments on this by stating that the prince 
should be “preserved from potions in various ways, for example by having 
his food and drink tasted or by the presence of good precious stones pro- 
vided for that purpose, and special snake’s tongues, and celestial tokens 
which the said prince should wear on the advice of the astrologers and 
should always have prepared in the court much theriac and matridat and 
other profitable remedies against poisons.”!” Theriac (ériaga) and Matridat 
were both medieval medicines, the former an antidote against poison 
and the latter more usually applied in case of the Black Death. 

The Majordomo was responsible for seeing that the prince ate the right 
food for the four seasons and that the royal chef could provide international 
cuisine. He was also in charge of table procedure and had to see that grace 
was said before the meal had begun, that doctors were in attendance to 
watch the way the prince ate and assist him if he should be poisoned or 
about to choke. The Majordomo was also responsible for the welfare of the 
royal guests, says Eiximenis, and particularly those who were from other 
nations. In these circumstances the banquet should be well prepared “so 
that not the slighest detail be forgotten, and the curtaining be both beauti- 
ful and abundant, and the crockery adequate and in readiness, and all 
the servants well-dressed and attired better than on other days, and many 
different and good foods, well-prepared in the style of the guests’ nation 
if at all possible.”#8 


16 Alfonso X, Las Siete Partidas, (Madrid, 1807), 2, Title 9, “oficial sin el qual non se debe 
facer despensa en casa del rey.” 

17 Op. cit., note 3, Ch. 746, “guardat de metzines per diverses vies, go és per tasts de ses viandes 
e de son beure, e per asisténcia de bones pedres precioses a agé deputades, e de lengues de serps 
specials, e de empromptes celestials que lo dit princep deu portar segons consell dels astrélechs, ¢ 
tostemps se deu tenir en Ja cort molta triaga aparellada, e matridat, e d’altres coses profitoses 
contra veri.” 

18 Idem, “que no y falla plats ne tille, ans l’encortinament sia bell e copids, 6 la vexella presta 


246 J. R. WEBSTER 


There should be a large quantity of food, well-prepared and well-served 
and the waiters should be ready to do theMajordomo’s bidding, without 
engaging in superfluous conversation. The smooth running of any banquet 
depended on the skill and efficiency of the Majordomo, whose position was 
of undisputed importance. 

The third main department within the King’s household was also ex- 
ceedingly important, for it concerned the exchequer. The three officers 
occupying fifth, sixth and seventh places in order of precedence were all 
in charge of royal finance. The chief of these, known as the Mestre Racional 
was assisted by two other officers, the Escrivd de Racié who dealt with the 
distribution of money amongst the personnel of the royal household and 
the treasurer (tresorer) who took charge of income and expenditure. Eixi- 
menis does not seem to be particularly interested in the Mestre Racional, 
whom he says is responsible for all accounts rendered to him by his subordi- 
nates. It is obviously necessary that he should be loyal, trustworthy and 
God-fearing but since he has no other duties apart from “listening to the 
expenditure of the others, it is not necessary for us to deal with him at 
length,”!® the Friar adds. Peter IV would not have agreed with Eiximenis, 
as in Ordinacié 149 he deals at great length with this officer’s duties and 
obligations. Much of this description is devoted to enumerating the officials 
with whom the Mestre Racional is required to deal in the course of his 
work. The King also indicates the procedure he should follow in several 
different circumstances. 

The Mestre Racional’s subordinate, the Escrivd de Racié, is not dealt with 
at much greater length by Eiximenis, who stresses the moral integrity 
necessary for such a position. In war, “he has special duties, since he has 
to take care of the wages, and see to the inspection of the knights and the 
estimates of live and dead beasts, and attend to the watches....”2° 

He should be near the Constable’s tent, so that he can be relied upon at 
any time and be careful to see that the prince can pay his army in order to 
avoid the lowering of his reputation. With him should be those guides 
(adalills) and infantrymen (almugdvers) who were given the job of being 
on the alert. Peter IV lists the way in which the Escriva de Racié should 
perform his duties and mentions the keeping of four account books, to 
prevent unauthorised persons from entering the King’s household. 


e aparengada, 6:15 servidors tots bé vestits e endregats mils que altres dies, ε les viandes moltes e 
bones, e bé endressades segons I’estil de la nacié dels convidats si fer-se pot.” 

18 Op. cit., note 3, Ch. 747, “hoyr lo compte dels altres no-ns cal fer lonch tractat.” 

20 Op. cit., note 3, Ch. 747, “porta singulars carrechs, car ha a fer a tots les cauteles del sou, ε 
a fer les mostres dels cavallers e les estimacions de les bésties vives e mortes, e ha attendre a les 
guaytes...” ; 

21 Op. cit., note 1. 


FRANCESC EIXIMENIS ON ROYAL OFFICIALS 247 


The second official under the Mestre Racional was the treasurer and Eixi- 
menis indicates why a knight should not be chosen for this position but 
opts in favour of a notable ciutada (worthy citizen). The treasurer’s posi- 
tion has been described in great detail by Probst. However, to complete this 
survey of officials of the realm, some reference should be made to points 
already dealt with by Probst. Peter I'V does not stipulate from which level 
of society the treasurer should be chosen, nor does he have a great deal to 
say about this particular office. Eiximenis, on the other hand, states that 
there had been some discussion as to whether the treasurer should be a mem- 
ber of the clergy, a Jew, a eunuch, or a member of the laity. The latter 
option was considered most suitable and it was decided that a notable ciu- 
tad would be abe to fulfil the duties required of him better than a 
knight. The treasurer was in charge of income and expenditure in the 
royal household and was consequently exposed to certain vices, such as 
avarice. He often tended to defer payments rather than meet the expenses 
incurred with generosity. Such parsimoniousness undermined the dignity 
of the king but it was a failing more likely to be found in a Jew than ina 
Christian layman. Although Eiximenis displays no anti-semitic feeling, 
he considers the Jew as morally suspect in that his life is spent in amassing 
money, often by the impoverishment of others. Knights err in being too 
generous and in any case the Friar regards fighting as their vocation. It 
becomes increasingly evident as he describes the reasons why a notable 
ciutada should be appointed as treasurer, that Eiximenis looks upon each 
class as having its specific duties in accordance with the true spirit of the 
Respublica Christiana. These duties should not be conceded to members 
of another class, as the balance of society would be upset. 

The notables ciutadans are wiser than the knights, according to Eiximenis, 
since they have the advantage of living in large cities, which he repeats, 
were built so that people would become more knowledgeable. Knights 
on the other hand do not have their minds sharpened by contact with 
ignorant peasants. The notables ciutadans are especially privileged as 
they are midway between knights and merchants and can therefore under- 
stand the idiosyncrasies of both classes.” Eiximenis seems to regard the 
notables ciutadans as possessing only the good points culled from those above 
and below them in the social scale. Their sound common-sense and business 
acumen will stand them in far greater stead than the more romantic cha- 


22 Op. cit., note 3, Ch. 755, “e saben de rune de Valtre, e per conseguent entenen-se queucom 
en la noblea dels cavallers, e per tal se fan mills ab ells en go que per tresoreria han a fer ab ells.” 
(“and they know something about each, and consequently understand something of the nobility 
of the knights, and as a result do better with them in matters of the treasury pertaining to them.”’) 


248 J. R. WEBSTER 


racter of the knights. The daily life of a knight does not teach him how to 
do accounts properly and his pride would preclude him from dealing kind- 
ly with humble folk. It would also make it difficult for him to be 
under the command of others, so it is obvious that he would be un- 
suited to the duties of a treasurer. Also unsuitable were Jews who might 
use the office as a means of taking revenge on Christians. Eunuchs too were 
looked upon as the most mean-spirited and revengeful people and should 
not on any account be chosen for important offices.22 

The treasurer is the last official described in any detail by Eiximenis, as 
he makes the comment that “to relate the duties of other lesser officials is 
not necessary in the present treatise since they are subordinate to those 
we have already mentioned and do not therefore greatly influence the 
Cosa Publica (Respublica Christiana) .”*4 

Nevertheless, whilst denying the need for explaining the positions of lesser 
officials, the Friar makes some general observations on the way the rulers 
of the towns should behave, and although these do not really fall within 
the category of officials of the realm, a brief reference to them helps to 
complete the historical picture. Their business is to see that the towns are 
governed for the well-being of the Community, for they are said to care 
for the good of all men. They should provide them with the necessities of 
life and see that peace is maintained publicly and privately. In this way 
they ensure the good estate and continuity of the Respublica Christiana. 

The importance of Eiximenis’ observations lies not in their originality 
but in the emphasis he places on the requirements for and the duties of the 
King’s officers. Whilst upholding the basic conditions laid down by Alfonso 
X and Peter IV, the Friar reveals his ecclesiastical calling in the way he 
regards their various qualifications and outlines their activities. For instance, 
moral integrity is required in a Chancellor, Eiximenis states, but Peter 
IV does not comment on this. In the case of the Alguatzir the King merely 
comments on his wartime activities. More attention is paid by the Friar 
to the post of treasurer than any other office and it would seem that this 
reflects the period during which he was writing. 


°3 Op. cit., note 3, Ch. 754, “quant l’om és castrat, se torna pijor que no era, especialment se 
torna a presumptuds e maliciés e avar, e pus cobeu de fembres en son cor que altre, quant és de- 
pertit si mateix, e agé procura la malicia que ha dins, qui’l fa tornar cech e foll e li encén al cor sa 
mala cobejanga.” (“when a man is a eunuch he becomes worse than he was before, becoming 
especially presumptuous, malicious and miserly, and more covetous of women in his heart than 
any other man ; for he is so degenerate himself and that causes the malice within him and makes 
him blind and mad and inflames his heart with his evil lust.”) 

34. Op. cit., note 3, Ch. 755, “dir dels altres menuts e menors officials no pertany al present trac- 
tat en quant lur ordinadié esta sots aquests que avem dits e qui no toca molt ’estament ne regiment 
de Ja cosa publica.” 


FRANCESC EIXIMENIS ON ROYAL OFFICIALS 949 


At the end of the fourteenth century in the Catalano-Aragonese fede- 
ration the notables ciutadans had already attained a significant position with- 
in the Community. Since it is thought that Eiximenis came from the 
merchant class, he had a special interest in its prosperity and the treasu- 
rer’s post gave him an opportunity of extolling the virtues of the successful 
merchants who rose to the ranks of notables ciutadans. It will also have been 
noticed that all officials were chosen from the ranks of the ecclesiastics, 
the nobility or the notables ciutadans, no mention being made of any other 
class participating in royal government. 

Justice is dealt with more fully than any other aspect of this government 
and this merely emphasises the moral purpose of the Friar’s works. His 
recommendation that prisoners be treated with mercy and kindness re- 
veals his Franciscan background and stands out in contrast to Peter IV’s 
advocation of harsh treatment and torture. Nevertheless, a modern reader 
finds it dfficult to see the efficacy of the over-kind treatment recommended 
by Eiximenis in a society where brutality was evidenced even in very minor 
cases of infraction of the law. 

In the foregoing an attempt has been made to introduce the English 
reader to an important fourteenth century Catalan writer, Francesc 
Eiximenis. The value of his works for historical research will have been 
observed; his corroboration of the Ordinacions of Peter IV published by 
Bofarull would alone support this contention. However, his words also 
enable scholars to decipher other manuscripts no longer legible, such as 
the Ordinacié on the Constable. As a friar minor his views differ from 
those of the authorities he quotes for his prime concern is not the material 
well-being but the moral integrity of the Community. For Eiximenis the 
royal officials hold positions of supreme importance, as upon their good 
government depends the prosperity of the Respublica Christiana. If they 
fulfil their obligations as laid down by Alfonso X and Peter IV and keep 
in mind the recommendations he himself makes, they will set an example 
worthy of emulation by their inferiors in the social scale. Only in this 
way can the King’s officials and those beneath their jurisdiction observe 
the true concept of the medieval Respublica Christiana as a hierarchical 
body of men working together for the establishment of a Christian Commu- 
nity on earth. 


University of Toronto. 


The Life of Guy of Merton 
by Rainald of Merton 


MARVIN L. COLKER 


ERTON Priory,! founded in 1114,? was “perhaps the most influen- 
tial of all the English houses of regular canons”® and figured pro- 
minently in the growth of the Austin Order in England. Not only did the 
priory flourish itself, but it also established daughter houses at Taunton, 
Bodmin, Canterbury, Twinham, Cirencester, and perhaps Dover.4 
One of the earliest members of Merton Priory was a certain Guy. Like 
Lanfranc and Anselm, he came from Italy to England,® where he had im- 
portant impact, though less than that of his two countrymen. An account 
of the foundation of Merton Priory in College of Arms Arundel MS 28 fol. 
ὃν (15th century) mentions him as “Ille apud nos merito famosissimus 
magister Gwido,”® and he may be the distinguished philosopher named in 
a fragmentary chronicle of French history: “Hoc tempore tam in diuina 
quam in humana philosophia floruerunt Lanfrancus Cantuariorum epis- 
copus, Guido Langobardus, Maingaudus Teutonicus, Bruno Remensis.”? 


1 On Merton Priory see: William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum VI (London, 1830) 245-247; 
Alfred Heales, The Records of Merton Priory (London, 1898); H. E. Malden, The Victoria History 
of the Counties of England: Surrey, [V (London, 1912) 64-68; L. H. Cottineau, Répertoire topo-biblio- 
graphique des abbayes et prieurés 11 (Macon, 1939) 1826; J. C. Dickinson, The Origins of the Austin 
Canons and Their Introduction into England (London, 1950) 117-119, 126, 128-130, 133, 150, 161, 
187-188, 192, 230, 234, 238, 253-254, 288; David Knowles and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious 
Houses of England and Wales (New York, 1953) 146; G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great 
Britain (London, 1958) 75; N.R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books 
(London, 1964) 130-131; J. C. Dicxmyson, “Les constructions des premiers chanoines réguliers 
en Angleterre,’ Cahiers de civilisation médiévale X°-XII® siécles 10 (1967) 181; Ὁ. J. Turner, 
‘Excavations near Merton Priory, 1962-3,’ Surrey Archaeological Collections 64 (1967) 35-70, esp. 
36-38. 

2 See Dickinson, Origins, 117. 

3 Ibid. 116. 

4 Ibid. 117-119. 

5 See the Latin text infra ch. 1. 

6 | am grateful to Dr. Conrad Swan, Rouge Dragon Pursuivant of Arms, of the College of Arms, 
London, who had the texts in the codex which pertain to Merton photographed for me and granted 
me permission to publish these texts. 

7 «Ἐκ historiae Francicae fragmento” in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France XII (1781) 3. 
Note ¢ on this page declares “Quis fuerit iste Guido Langobardus nobis assequi non licuit.” 


THE LIFE OF GUY OF MERTON 951 


Guy joined Merton at its inception and later became the first prior and a 
principal organizer of its daughter houses Taunton and Bodmin.® 

Fortunately, there is preserved a biography of Guy, recording events in 
his life after he entered Merton Priory. This work abounds in interest, 
providing insights into the character, personality, efforts, and problems 
of a twelfth-century monastic administrator. 

The biography is in the form of a letter written by a Rainald to a Ralph, 
in answer to Ralph’s request for information about Guy’s life. Rainald 
certainly belonged to Merton Priory, as is plentifully evident from the 
Epistola: cf. “nostrorum quidam” (ch. 4), “ad nos” and “nobis” (ch. 10), 
“confessionum nostrarum” and “nostris miseriis” (ch. 11), “inter nos” and 
“omnes nos” (ch. 13) in reference to Merton. T. D. Hardy is probably 
correct in regarding Ralph as a carnal, rather than spiritual, son of Guy:° 
cf. “de uita gloriosi parentis tui” (introd.) and “Te... patrissare cognoui,” 
“honorabilis pater tuus,” “uenerandi parentis tui,” and the admonition 
not “a tam religioso parente degeneres” (ch. 18). In any case, it is clear 
that the Epistola was composed while Algar was bishop of Coutances (ch. 13), 
and so, between 1132 and 1151. 

The Epistola represents almost a Mirror of the Ideal Religious. Guy is 
depicted as sincerely devout and zealous in religious duties (chs. 2, 4, 5, 8, 
10), as conscientious and strict in keeping the finest points in the customs 
of Merton (chs. 2, 3), as able to endure suffering (ch. 11), as humble (chs. 1, 
4, 5, 12), as extremely charitable toward the poor (chs. 8, 9), as comforting 
to those in need of support and encouragement (chs. 11, 13). 

Guy, however, disliked administrative work and felt as if it were a trap 
and a prison (ch. 10). The Epistola speaks of him as a man of truth in every 
way (ch. 18). Indeed the text says that he wished to please God alone (ch. 
10), that he was fearless in speaking his mind (ch. 18), and that he would 
say what had to be said (chs. 8, 18) and lived by his words (ch. 8). Such 
forthrightness would have caused difficulty to any administrator. And Guy 
did have trouble more than once. At Taunton he was unable to reform the 
habits of the secular canons, who had no wish to change their ways (ch. 7). 
The poor were not satisfied with his gifts, and the rich were vexed by his 
giving to the poor what they themselves had coveted (ch. 9). Likewise, 
it seems that people complained to the bishop of Exeter against Guy on the 


8 See the Latin text infra chs. 1, 6-8, 13. 
9 Descriptive Catalogue of the Materials Relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland to the End 
of the Reign of Henry VII II (Rolls Series; London, 1865) 139. 


10 Pp, B. Gams, Series episcoporum ecclesiae catholicae (Regensburg, 1873) 542 and Dickinson, 
Origins, 119. 


252 M. L. COLKER 


grounds that he did not know how to recieve guests and did not show 
sufficient respect to men of power and influence, who could benefit the 
church greatly (ch. 10). 

Whatever the complaints and annoyances that he occasioned, Guy must 
have been highly respected at the time of his death. Such a multitude came 
to Exeter for the funeral as had never been seen there before, and not 
even a bishop, within the memory of those then present, had received such 
veneration (ch. 17). In the Epistola Guy is mentioned as saintly (chs. 12, 
18) and as saint-like (ch. 17), and there are some hagiographic touches in 
the biography when it deals with the efficacy of his prayers (chs. 11, 12) 
and with a miracle about his burial (ch. 16). 

But here is an English summary of the Epistola, which will allow the 
reader to form a fuller impression of Guy of Merton: 


(Introd.) Dear brother, after a delay because of my many occupations, I 
now fulfill your urgent request that I write to you about the life of your father. 
(1) Guy, an Italian of great reputation for his direction of schools, joined Mer- 
ton Priory at its start. (2) He took his novitiate very seriously. When the time 
came for his confession before the prelate, he was so anguished that he could 
hardly speak; instead he pulled his hair and dashed his head against a wall. 
After he fully became a monk at Merton, he was unlike others, who are con- 
sumed with pride and disdain learning the minute points among the customs 
of the monastery. On the contrary, he observed these minutiae as if they came 
from God himself. 

(3) He avoided secular concerns and attended to reading and meditation. 
When he engaged in devotions and his mind happened to wander by human 
frailty, he would return to himself with indignation and sometimes gnash his 
teeth or dig his nails into his flesh or beat his chest with his fist to make his 
mind more attentive. He persecuted his flesh as a hostile enemy. He frequently 
slept on straw, and he would have killed himself through starvation, had the 
prior not objected. 

(4) The prior of the monastery, Robert, promoted Guy to deacon even though 
Guy protested his unworthiness. Certain of our canons, especially subprior 
Robert, still recall that Guy performed with particular zeal the consecration of 
the taper on Holy Saturday. He was so intent on psalms during his reci- 
tation of them that it seemed as if he were holding God by the foot, as 
people commonly say. (5) Only under compulsion did he accept the 
priesthood. He was deeply involved in his priestly duties, and as he declared 
humbly to a friend, only twice did he celebrate Mass without tears. 

(6) Bishop William of Winchester, eager to establish a community of 
Austin canons at Taunton, requested Prior Robert to grant Guy for this enter- 
prise. (7) Guy and the brothers who came with him from Merton lived accord- 
ing to the Rule of St. Augustine at Taunton, and certain secular canons who 
had been there began to adopt the way of life according to the rule. But though 
Guy invested much effort in training the secular canons, he was unable to ac- 
complish much, because of their firmly rooted bad habits and their lack of will 
to improve. Guy was deeply upset over his failure to achieve the success at 
Taunton that he had wished. 


THE LIFE OF GUY OF MERTON 253 


(8) While he was prior at Taunton, he said what had to be said and lived 
according to his words. He gave to the poor all that he could. Frequently 
he would assign to the sick and needy the food that had been set on his own 
table, while he would be content with bread and water. Somone, expressing 
pity for Guy, complained that he was handing over to the poor the good food 
that had been brought for him, whereas he could have exerted his authority 
and obtained from the cellarer other food for the poor. Guy replied “I do not 
doubt that the poor should be provided for from any source. But what is taken 
from one’s own mouth is more pleasing to God. Let me not fatten my flesh 
for the worms and see a precious creature of God die before me with hunger. 
We desire to be saved and do not want to take pains. Who of the saints attained 
rest without having taken pains ? In passing from delight to delight, one can- 
not attain happiness in this world and also the next.” Guy macerated his 
body with fasting, vigils, and excessive cold: in winter he often clothed himself 
only in a tunic beneath a thin cape and did not use a pelisse. He lived an even 
more austere life at Taunton than at Merton, for at Taunton there was no one 
to restrain his fervor. He gave to the poor whatever he could have kept for 
himself. He would buy for them capes, tunics, and shoes. He would even 
secretly take from the dormitory clothing which he would present to beggars, 
without working hardship upon the monks, to whom he always provided what- 
ever was necessary. 

(9) The people of Taunton still remember him as a good prior, though the 
poor were not pleased despite all that he gave to them and though the rich 
disliked him because he would not lavishly assign to them what had been allott- 
ed for the poor. (10) Thus, complaints seem to have reached the bishop of 
Winchester that Guy was not carrying out his priorate satisfactorily, since he 
did not know how to receive guests and to honor the powerful, through whom 
the Church ought to grow. Guy in fact wished to please God alone and always 
considered the post of administrator burdensome. And so, by letters and many 
appeals he requested the prior of Merton to recall him to the place he loved. 
Finally he gained his desire. When he came back to us, he did not grieve, as 
do some people who are deposed from the priorate, but rejoiced as if freed from 
a prison or like a bird released from a trap, and he remarked to us that he had 
now found his heart which had left him for a long time. He was as ardent in 
his duties after his return as a man just beginning his monastic career. 

(11) Among us he heard confessions: no one came to him in sadness who did 
not depart greatly comforted by him. He had a special gift of knowing how to 
console. The prior himself experienced Guy’s sanctity, for after Guy’s prayer 
on one occasion, the prior’s illness was alleviated. (12) Indeed I heard that 
when Guy was at Taunton, he frequently calmed storms and performed other 
services through prayer. 

(13) He taught and encouraged us all, until he was again sent off, to establish 
the Austin canons of Bodmin. Algar, then in charge of that place and now 
bishop of Coutances, obtained, though with difficulty, Guy as prior for the new 
Austin community. But not much later Guy died: he was sent to Bodmin in the 
winter and died in the following May, but only after the religious life was 
firmly fixed at Bodmin and after Algar and very many others had become ca- 
nons and were strengthened in their way of life by Guy’s teaching. (14) Shortly 
before the end of his life, a case arose which had to be discussed with the bishop 
of Exeter. On his journey to the bishop, Guy’s horse dashed wildly and Guy 


254 Μ. L. COLKER 


fell into a pit. His injury was grave. Brought to Exeter, he worsened in health 
from day to day. Geoffrey, then canon of Plimpton and now prior there, 
visited Guy, and Algar too was at his bedside. During his last period on earth, 
Guy ceaselessly accused himself of his sins. 

(15) When the time of death drew near, he asked what day it was. Told 
that it was the Vigil of Ascension, he declared “Today is the day of my redemp- 
tion, today is the day of God’s compassion,” and he concluded “It is the day 
of my joy.” 

(16) Geoffrey looked after the body, since Algar, in tears, could not control 
his distress. When the body was being clothed according to custom and the 
cloak with which Guy was to be wrapped was discovered too small, extending 
only to the knees, suddenly, as if by miracle, a suitable long cloak was found. 

(17) Algar arranged to bring the body to the church of Bodmin. But the canons 
of Exeter objected to this plan, and the funeral was held in Exeter. Such a 
multitude flocked together for the rite as had never been seen in the city. So 
much respect for the body was shown as no one of Exeter remembers had been 
shown even to the body of a bishop or of anyone else of the city. Guy’s body 
was laid in a stone sarcophagus and set in a place of honor in the monastery. 

(18) See, dear brother, how excellent a man was your father. It would be 
detestable for you to degenerate from such a parent. His remarkable fervor, 
purity, and spirit of truth, by which he feared no one and spoke his mind freely, 
and his other gifts cannot be fully expressed by words. I wrote my account of 
Guy between the canonical hours, and often, when I should have been intent 
on these religious services, 1 was thinking instead about the composition: there- 
fore, I wish you to compensate my effort by praying that I become an imitator 
of the sanctity of Guy. 


Despite the value of the Epistola for the early history of Merton, Alfred 
Heales in his The Records of Merton Priory (London, 1898) strangely omits 
all mention of the biography, even though he names numerous sources 
on pp. xvii-xix and in Appendix pp. i-viii. Heales speaks of Guy only by 
citing the Arundel MS reference to him.“ Three small passages from the 
Epistola are reproduced by Dickinson: “Quidam Italicus---consecutus 
fuerat” of ch. 1; “Qui in eadem ecclesia---non ualebant” of ch. 7; and 
“ad institudendam Bothminensem---roboratis” of ch, 13.22 

The £pistola is preserved on folios 91-98 of British Museum Royal MS 
8. E. ix, which also contains Alexander Nequam’s De laudibus diuinae sa- 
pientiae* Both the Nequam and the Rainaldus in the codex were trans- 
cribed in the 15th century. The book belonged to Merton Priory and 
later to John Lord Lumley (ca. 1534-1609) .+ 


11 Heales, Records of Merton Priory 4. See the second paragraph of this paper. 

12 Dickinson, Origins 187 ἢ. 7, 242 τ. 1, 119 n. 1. Still another passage (p. 118 ἢ. 8) is wrongly 
assigned to the Epistola and actually appears in a different work, concerning the foundation of 
Merton, on fol. 3% of the Arundel MS. Dickinson mentions Guy on pp. 118-119, 187, 242. 

38 The codex is described in G. F. Warner and J. P. Gilson, British Museum Catalogue of Western 
Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections I (London, 1921) 254. 

14 Ker, Medieval Libraries 130. 

15 Seen. 13 supra and cf. Sears Jayne and F.R. Johnson, The Lumley Library (London, 1956) 313. 


THE LIFE OF GUY OF MERTON 255 


In presenting now the first complete edition of the biography, I adhere 
to the orthography of the only known manuscript, but errors of the scribe 
are corrected and chapter numbers are added. I am grateful to the autho- 
rities of the British Museum for granting permission to publish the text 
from a very clear microfilm. I likewise appreciate the encouragement of 
Rev. J. C. Dickinson, of Birmingham University, England. 


EPISTOLA DE VITA VENERABILIS GVIDONIS 
MERITONENSIS ECCLESIE CANONICI 


Dilecto Suo Radulfo Suus Rainaldus! 


Petisti, charissime frater, et obnixe petisti quatinus de uita gloriosi parentis tui 
uel breuiter aliqua tibi transscriberem. Petitioni tue, quamuis pie, tamen assensum 
prebere diu distuli, tum multis occupationibus prepeditus tum potius materie magni- 
tudinem uiribus mee possibilitatis nimis preponderare perpendens. Sed quoniam quas 
imperitia denegat, interdum uires caritas sumministrare solet, uitam ipsius saltem 
summatim perstringere temptabo, tuoque desiderio, prout potero,? satisfacere curabo. 


<i> 
Igitur in primordio quo fratres apud Meritonam® ad regulariter uiuendum secun- 
dum institutionem egregii doctoris Augustini congregabantur, quidam Italicus ge- 
nere,* qui in scolis regendis preclaram famam consecutus fuerat, nomine Guido, ad 


conuersionem inter ceteros uenit. Dici non potest quam humiliter ut suciperetur 
expetiit, cum quanta deuotione religionis habitum suscepit. 


<li> 


Totum enim negotium illud, quo ad militiam Christi nouicii promouentur, magnis 
gemitibus multisque lacrimis et suspiriis prosequebatur. Nam dum ad confessionem, 
ut mos est, prelato faciendam (fol. 915) uenisset, tanto dolore affectus est ut loqui 
uix posset, sicsibi uehementer indignans ut semetipsum per capillos traheret, caput 
ad parietem allideret, ex doloris uehementia quam ueraciter ad Deum conuerteretur 
insinuans. Tandem conuentui sociatus, non, tu plerique solent, quos scientia secu- 
laris inflat,’ minutas consuetudines monasterii dedignabatur addiscere, sed uelut ab 
ore Dei prolatas® diligenter inuestigare et obseruare satagebat. Et quoniam, ut 
scriptum est ‘Qui modica spernit, paulatim decidit,”’ ita e contrario per minimorum 
custodiam preceptorum fit progressus ad summa uirtutum. 


1 On Ralph and Rainald see my Introduction. 

2 petero MS. 

3 On Merton Priory see ἢ. 1 on my Introduction. 
4 Cf. the second paragraph of this paper. 

4s quod MS. 

5 scientia-—inflat: cf. 1 Cor. 8: 1. 

ὁ ab ore---prolatas: cf. Iob 15: 13. 

? Qui modica---decidit: cf. Eccli. 19: 1. 


256 M. L. COLKER 


<i> 

Sic uir uenerabilis implendis maioribus institutis operam dabat ut non minorem 
diligentiam minimis obseruandis adhiberet. Verbi gratia: si quando uel ante capi- 
tulum uel alibi locorum ubi nobis moris est inclinare transisset et non inclinasset, 
licet iam longius processisset, ilico reuertebatur et tam deuote quam humiliter in- 
clinabat. Amator claustri erat in tantum ut cum eum exire causa rationabilis uel 
necessitas compulisset, quantocius redire festinaret. Curis secularibus animum impe- 
αὐτὶ semper declinans, lectionibus etenim et meditationibus totus deditus erat, non 
solum stultiloquia uel scurrilia sed etiam ociosa uerba deuitans® quando fratrum collo- 
quiis intererat. (fol. 92) Sermones suos iuxta Apostolum semper in gratia sale sapien- 
tie condiebat,® locutiones certis horis in claustris a patribus non ad destitutionem sed 
morum instructionem institutas perpendens. In ecclesia diuinis laudibus cum ceteris 
assistens, quando, ut se habet humana miseria, corde uagabatur, in semet reuersus 
sibique multum indignans, interdum dentibus stridebat!® uel carnem unguibus discer- 
pebat uel pectus pugno percutiebat, uelut hoc modo mentem stabiliorem reddere 
posset. Precipue uii psalmis'®s quando in conuentu dicebantur, interesse uolebat, 
dicens quod qui peccatorem se recognoscit, his psalmis, qui specialiter pro peccatis 
instituti sunt, occurrere debeat. Sic enim minuta peccata paruasque negligentias 
deflebat acsi omnium criminum reus esset. Quid referam quod suimet ex toto contemp- 
tor extiterit, qui nullam corporis ciram gerebat, immo uelut hostem infestissimum 
carnem suam persequebatur ? Et nisi patris nostri prudentia refragaretur, eandem 
miro spiritus feruore ieiuniorum et escarum abstinentia funditus consumpsisset. In 
lectulo dum super uestimenta sua quiescere putaretur, subtus in solo stramento uo- 
lutabatur, iuxta illud de Canticis, circuiens et querens quem diligebat anima sua. 
Et in eius (fol. 92”) amorem suspirans, lauabat per singulas noctes lectum suum. 
Lacrimis suis stratum suum rigabat.* Maxime tamen post matutinas usque ad lucem 
in sacris uigiliis excubare solebat. 


<iv> 


Quid plura ? Tam" religiose in omni conuersatione se habebat <ut>" etiam his, 
qui ante se ad conuersionem uenerant, exemplo esset. Cernens pater monasterii, 
dominus Robertus, uirum ad omnem perfectionem uirtutum gradibus tendere, ad 
sacros illum ordines festinauit prouchere, et de clerico usque ad diaconatus officium 
se indignum reclamantem promoueri fecit. In quo sacro officio quam strenue minis- 
trauerit, uerbis expleri non potest. Adhuc nostrorum quidam, maxime dominus 


8 scurrilia---deuitans: cf. Matth. 12: 36 and esp. Regula S. Benedicti 6 (ed. R. Hanslik, CSEL 
75 [1960] 39). 

9 in gratia---condiebat: Coloss. 4: 6. 

10 dentibus stridebat: cf. Ps. 36: 12, Marc. 9: 17, Act. 7: 54. 

10a These are the seven penitential psalms. 

Ἢ circuiens---anima sua: Cant. 3: 1. 

12 In ejus amorem---rigabat: Ps. 6: 7. 

13 tam bis MS. 

14 A space of five letters is left at this point in the codex, but perhaps only an ut is missing. 

45 Canons from Huntingdon were the first to staff Merton Priory, and Robert, subprior of 
Huntingdon, became the first prior of Merton. He seems to have held this priorate from 1114 
until his death in 1150. See Dugdale, Monasticon VI 78-81, 245; Heales, Records 6; Cottineau I 
1438; Dckinson, Origins 116-117. 


THE LIFE OF GUY OF MERTON 957 


supprior Robertus,!® memorare solent cum quanta deuotione cerei consecrationem 
in Sabbato sancto persoluerit, asserentes nunquam, ut sibi uisum est, alicui officio 
deuotius peracto se interfuisse, omnibus circum astantibus miro compunctionisaffectu 
permotis. Nimirum que legebat uel cantabat, cum tanta deuotione, cum tanto feruo- 
re tam instanter proferebat ut uere per os ipsius Spiritus Sanctus uerba proferre 
uideretur. Psalmis etiam quos dicebat quasi Deum, ut dici solet, pede teneret, totus 
insistebat. 


<v> 


Postea presbiterii gradum suscipere uix compulsus, hoc etiam sacrosanctum 
officium (fol. 93) tam deuote prosecutus est ut, sicut cuidam familiari suo post 
multum temporis humiliter confessus est, nunquam nisi bis missam?” sine lacrimis 
celebrauerit. Cerneres dum ad hoc sacrum misterium celebrandum se prepararet, 
lacrimis suffundi et quodam modo subito in uirum alterum commutari ut spiritu 
Dei totum illum agi dubitare minime posses. 


<vi> 


Interea uenerabilis Wintoniensis episcopus Guillelmus,!* quandam ecclesiam suam 
in Tantoniensi territorio 173 suo secundum regularem canonicorum institutionem infor- 
mari desiderans, patrem nostrum dominum Robertum conuenit, et ut sibi prefatum 
uirum ad hoc opus concederet, humilibus precibus expediit. Quem licet nobis ualde 
necessarium, tamen quia sciebat Apostoli preceptum ut non que nostra sunt sed que 
aliorum querere debeamus,”° ad instituendam prefatam ecclesiam cum paucis fra- 
tribus nostris direxit. 

<vii> 

Quo uir uenerabilis cum peruenisset et cum fratribus quisecum uenerant secundum 
morem ecclesie nostre regulariter uiueret, quidam canonicorum qui in eadem ecclesia 
seculariter antea uixerant ad conuersionem uenire ceperunt. In quibus erudiendis 
licet plurimum laborauerit, tamen parum proficere potuit quoniam eorum mores, 
in mala consuetudine inueterati, nouellam sancte conuersationis (fol. 93") gratiam 
aspirare non ualebant quia nec ad hoc niti, sicut opus est, omnino uolebant. Vnde 
nimis anxiabatur quod fructum quem desiderabat non faciebat. 


<vili> 
Tamen quamdiu in loco illo commoratus est, quod ad susceptum pastoris officium 


pertinet, que dicenda erant dicebat nec a uerbis uiuendo dissentiebat, sed sicut in 
Christo coram Christo uerba Christi loquebatur, sic Christo fauente quecumque 


16 Not to be confused with the Robert of n. 15 supra. 

17 mssam (i suprascript by the scribe) MS. 

18 William Giffard was bishop of Winchester from 1100 to 1129: see Gams, Series episcoporum 
198; Dickinson, Origins 118, 120 n. 1, 128; Dictionary of British Biography (1950) XXI 298-299; 
F. M. Powicke and E. B. Fryde, Handbook of National Chronology (London, 1961) 258. See also n. 
19 infra. 

19 ‘The Austin priory of Taunton was founded about 1110 by William Giffard. On this priory 
see Dugdale, Monasticon VI 165-168; James Savage, The History of Taunton in the County of 
Somerset (Taunton, 1822) 71-82; Cottineau, Repertoire ΤΊ 3123; Dickinson, Origins 118, 135, 242; 
Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses 155. 

20 non que-~-debeamus: 1 Cor. 10: 24. 


258 M. L. GOLKER 


precipiebat, prior ut erat nomine ita et opere prior implere satagebat. Ad hec cultor 
pauperem erat in tantum ut quicquid rationabiliter poterat eisdem impendere summo 
studio?procuraret. F requenter ad mensam sedens, que sibi apponebantur, infirmis 
et indigentibus reseruari faciebat, pane solummodo et aqua contentus. Cum autem 
aliquis, uelut illi compatiendo quia nichil boni corpusculo suo uel in cibis uel aliis 
uite necessariis conferret, conquereretur quod omnes pene bonos cibos sibi allatos 
pauperibus et infirmis offerendos reseruaret, non opus esse ut ita faceret, cum de cel- 
lario de coquina potestatem haberet accipere sicut magister que pauperibus erogaret, 
humiliter respondebat: ‘Et de penu et undecunque rationabiliter possunt, que Christi 
membris indigentibus largiantur, sumenda non ambigo. Tamen quod ori proprio 
subtrahitur, Christo fore magis gratum estimo. Ego cum (fol. 94) uoluero, bonas 
escas habere potero. Pauper et infirmus hinc penuria inde doloribus uexatur. Quid 
putas? Quomodo attendit et considerat unde aliquid boni sibi ueniat ἢ Ego miser- 
rimus deuorarem quod aliquam illi conferre ualeat consolationem ? Absit absit ut 
meam putridam carnem ad opus uermium? incrassare debeam et preciosum mem- 
brum Christi? coram me fame mori uideam. Esto. Saluari desideramus et laborare 
nolumus. Quem uero sanctorum absque labore ad requiem” peruenisse legimus ? 
Veracis testatoris uerba sunt, quod difficile, immo impossibile, sit ut de deliciis ad 
delicias transeamus ut in hoc seculo et etiam in futuro beati simus.’?** Hinc ieiuniis, 
escarum abstinentia, magnis uigiliis, nimiis etiam frigoribus corpus macerabat, tanto 
amplius quanto non, sicut apud nos, supra se habebat qui equi Dei supra modum 
interdum currentis habenas restringeret. Nimiis, inquam, frigoribus corpusculum 
affligebat, qui sepius in hyeme sine pellicea sola tunica sub tenui cappa uestitus erat. 
Quicquid habere poterat, maxime quod ad altare ex fidelium oblationibus ueniebat, 
in usus pauperum expendebat, inde cappas inde tunicas et sotulares ad opus eorum 
emens. Que cum deficerent, ad perticam in dormitorium ibat, et nunc pelliceam 
nunc tunicam pie rapiens, petenti pauperi secreto porrigebat. Nec hoc ita facie 
(fol. 94) bat ut fratres expoliaret, quibus abundanter necessaria semper procurabat. 
<ix> 

Tantonienses adhuc allum bonum priorem appellant. Qui uere pater orphanorum 
et uir uiduarum™ erat, qui pauperum et infirmorum curam tam sollicite gerebat, 
quibus dum inpenderet quicquid poterat, nunquam tamen eis satis erat. Diuitibus 
uero non bene placebat quoniam res pauperum in usus eorum prodige, sicut quidam 
faciunt, expendere nullo modo uolebat. Quibus tamen quod opus erat inpendebat, 
totum studium totaque deuotio ipsius erga pauperes existebat. 


<x> 


Hine putant quidam auribus domini episcopi Wintoniensis insusurratum illum 
prioratum dignum non fore, qui hospites suscipere nesciret, potentes per quos ecclesia 
crescere habebat, sicut dignum erat non honoraret. Vir autem Dei, qui soli Deo 
placere querebat, oneri prelationem semper habebat quia animarum lucrum, quod 
sitiebat, sicut uellet non inueniebat. Vnde litteris multisque legationibus, ut ad di- 
lectum locum de quo exierat reuerteretur, dominum priorem interpellauit. Tandem 


21 putridam---uermium: cf. Eccli. 19:3. 

#2 preciosum---Christi: cf. 1 Cor. 6: 15, Ephes, 5: 30. 

23 absque---requiem: cf. Isai 14: 3, 2 Thess. 1: 17. 

386. difficile---simus: cf. Matth. 19:24, Mar. 10: 25, Luc. 18: 25. 
24. pater---uiduarum: cf. Ps. 67: 6. 


THE LIFE OF GUY OF MERTON 259 


desiderium consecutus, ubi ad nos reuersus est, non ut quidam de prioratu depositi 
solent contristabatur, sed tanquam ab ergastulo graui liberatus uel sicut auis de la- 
queo uenantium ereptus, letabatur, exultabat, Deoque gratias agebat, nobisque post 
modicum temporis quia cor suum, quod se diu dereliquerat, iam inuenisset, gaudens 
indicauit. Ac uelut tunc (fol. 95) primo ad conuersionem accederet, que retro ges- 
serat paruipendens, ad summa toto studio ferebatur. 
<xi> 

Dumque illi suscipiendarum confessionum nostrarum cura commissa fuisset, ita 
se nostris miseriis compatiendo ac miserando contemperabat ut pene nullus de pec- 
cato suo siue de aliqua temptatione tristis ad eum accederet qui non ab eo consolatus 
reuerteretur. Habebat sane magnam gratiam in uerbo consolationis, omnem etiam 
infirmitatem ferre sciebat, unde uelut peritus medicus, animarum uulneribus medi- 
candis oportunitate et diligentiam modis omnibus impendebat. Cuius etiam sancti- 
tatis uirtutem dominus prior in semetipso expertus est. Nam cum grauissimam in- 
curisset egritudinem et se posse conualescere desperasset, euocans illum ad se, rogauit 
ut in ecclesiam iret ac pro se Deum deprecaretur: mox ut fudit precem, sensit infir- 
mitas alleuiationem. 

<xii> 

Audiui apud Tantonam eundem constitutum, pro ingruentibus tempestatibus 
aliisque necessitatibus frequenter orare rogatum, orasse statimque petitionis effectum 
subsecutum, Non ista commemoraui quod uirum sanctum miracula facere affecta- 
tum putauerim, tanquam ex hoc sue sanctitatis ostentationem quesierit, cum iactan- 
tiam uelut pestem maximam semper abhorruerit, sed ut ostenderem quam magne 


fidei extitit quod totus pietatis uisceribus affluebat, qui proximorum necessitatibus 
quibuscumque modis poterat subue (fol. 95v) nire paratus erat. 


aoe 


<xi> 


Semper autem animarum lucrum querebat. Vnde inter nos positus, tanquam bonus 
pater omnes nos instruebat exhortabatur, et uelut pia nutrix fouebat et consolabatur*® 
donec iterum nobis preripitur et ad instituendam Bothminensem ecclesiam*® trans- 
mittitur. Magister enim Algarus, nunc Constantiensis ecclesie presul, tunc autem 
illius loci procurator,*’ tum per se tum per Exoniensem episcopum”* eundem uenera- 
bilem uirum ad prioratum prefate ecclesie, licet cum difficultate, tandem impetrauit. 
Verum non multo post uitam finiuit. Erat enim tempus hyemale quando illuc missus 
est, et in estate proxima mense Maio, idus Maii, uiam uniuerse carnis ingressus est,” 


25 pia---consolabatur: cf. 1 Thess. 2: 7. 

26 Bodmin was founded about 1120. On Bodmin see Dugdale, Monasticon II (1819) 459 465; 
George Oliver, Monasticon dioecesis Exoniensis (Exeter, 1846) 15-21; Cottineau, Répertoire I (1935) 
403; Dickinson, Origins 118 n. 7, 128; Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses 128. 

27 Algar, who had been dean of Bodmin, was bishop of Coutances in Normandy from 1132 to 
1150/1151: cf. Gams, Series episcoporum 542 and Dickinson, Origins 118-119. 

28 William Warelwast, bishop of Exeter from 1107 to 1136/1137, was founder of Plympton and 
Bodmin monasteries. See Dugdale, Monasticon ΠῚ 515 ; Oliver, op. cit. 15, 129 ; Diekinson, Origins 
113, 128 ; Dictionary of National Biography (1950) XX 818-819 ; Gams, Series episcoporum 189 and 
Powicke and Fryde, Handbook 225. 

29 yiam---ingressus est: cf. Ios. 23: 14; 3 Reg. 2: 2. 


260 M. L. COLKER 


prius tamen in ecclesia Bothminensi, quam regebat, religione fundata, magistro 
quoque Algaro aliisque quam plurimis canonicis effectis et in sancta conuersatione 
per eius institutionem plurimum roboratis. 


<xiv> 


Circa finem uero causa extitit qua Exoniensem episcopum adire debebat. Quo 
itinere equo cui presidebat in preceps ruente, contigit ut in foueam quandam corruens 
grauissimam circa intestinorum loca lesionem incurreret. Vnde quibusdam uisum 
est quod hac de causa celerius ad extrema peruenerit. Ad Exoniam uero perductus, 
lecto prosternitur, morbo de die in diem semper ingrauescente. Venerat ad uisen- 
dum eum (fol. 96) uir religiosus magister Gaufridus, tunc canonicus de Plintona, nunc 
autem in eodem loco prioris officio fungens,*° affuit et magister Algarus, uterque ad 
obsequendum in omnibus infirmo tam sedulus quam deuotus. Qui leticia pariter ac 
mesticia uehementer afficiebantur: hinc gaudentes quod illum in tanta deuotione ad 
exitum properare cernerent, inde contristati quod tam dilecti presentia destitueban- 
tur. Siquidem testati sunt nobis quod aliquem in infirmitate sua deuotius se haben- 
tem nunquam uiderint. Accusabat enim se sine intermissione de peccatis suis, lapsum 
quo in foueam ceciderat sepe commemorans et cum lacrimis dicens ‘In foueam cecidi. 
Heu heu, ego captiuus.? Hoc enim uerbum, quando se accusabat, semper in ore 
habebat: “Ego captiuus in quam profundum puteum inferni propter nimia peccata 
mea precipitandus sum. O Christe, miserere serui tui, quia licet aliter uixi quam 
debui, tamen in te, Domine, speraui: non confundar in eternum, sed in tua, non mea, 
iusticia libera me et eripe me.’*! Multum de confessione loquebatur, quia nescio si 
aliquis purius illo delicta sua confitebatur. De fide quoque sancte Trinitatis tam 
perfecte tamque profunde disserebat ut prefati docti uiri in stuporem conuerterentur. 


<xv> 


Appropinquante uero hora mortis eius,®? iam membris (fol. 965) premortuis, uelut 
in extasim raptus, diu iacuit immobilis. Expergefactus autem cepit inquirere que 
dies esset. Responsum est uigiliam esse Ascensionis Dominice.*? Tunc ab intimo 
cordis longa trahens suspiria, in hanc uocem exultationis erupit® ‘Hodie dies est re- 
demptionis mee.’ Et tanquam in gaudio tante solennitatis aliquandiu repausans, 
subiecit “Hlodie dies est misericordie Dei.’ Iterumque uelut in consideratione tante 
misericordie paululum respirans, ita conclusit ‘Dies gaudii mei.’ Erat autem inter 
nonam et uesperam cum hec uerba proferret. Sicque totus in amorem Christi sus- 
pensus, usque ad confinium diei et noctis quo spiritum exalauit, per interuallum uerba 
dulcia ad gloriosam Ascensionem pertinentia proferebat ita ut cum loqui uix posset, 
ascendens in altum,* sepius reuolueret. 


80 The Austin priory of Plympton was founded by Bishop William Warelwast in 1121. Con- 
cerning Plympton see Dugdale, Monasticon VI 51-55 3 Oliver, op. cit. 129-150 ; Cottineau, Réper- 
towre ΤΊ 2304 ; Dickinson, Origins 113, 128 ; Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses 150. 
Geoffrey was prior from 1128 to 1160 : cf. Dugdale, op. cit. VI 51 and Dickinson, of. cit. 8, 9 n. 40. 

31 in te---eripe me: cf. Ps. 70: 1-2. 

32 Appropinquante---eius : cf. Matth. 26 : 45. 

33 Ascension Thursday is forty days after Easter. 

84 in hanc--erupit : cf. Isa. 48 : 20. 

85 ascendens in altum bis MS. 


THE LIFE OF GUY OF MERTON 261 


<xVi> 


Curabat corpus satis diligenter magister Gaufridus quoniam magister Algarus 
solummodo lacrimis et gemitibus uacabat, non de salute defuncti male sentiendo sed 
quod sibi tam dulcis subtrahebatur amicus ingemiscendo nec dolori modum impo- 
nere®® preualendo. Cum uero corpus secundum consuetudinem uestiretur, cappam, 
qua super induendum et totum obuoluendum erat, nimis curtam, id est usque circa 
genua pertingentem, (fol. 97) inuenerunt. Vnde turbati dum de alia querenda trac- 
tarent, subito mirum in modum satis, et supra quam necesse erat, longa reperta est, 
uehamenter super hoc stupentibus qui aderant Deoque gratias agentibus, qui et huic 
miraculo fidele postmodum testimonium perhibuerunt. 

<xvii> 

Disponebat magister Algarus ad Bothminensem ecclesiam corpus deferre. At 
Exonienses canonici nullo modo consentire uoluerunt, immo eiusdem corporis exe- 
quias tanquam sancti et a Deo sibi concessi cum omni honorificentia celebrare statu- 
erunt. Aderat dies Dominice Ascensionis, cum ex diuersis partibus tantus conuenit 
populus, quantus in Exonia ciuitate nunquam antea simul conuenisse uisus est, mi- 
rantibus plurimis et ueraciter affirmantibus ad uiri Dei obsequium diuinitatis instinc- 
tu tantam excitatam fuisse multitudinem. Baiulabant feretrum maiores illius ecclesie 
persone, totumque officium cum tanta ueneratione persoluebatur, quantam in illa 
ciuitate uel exequiis episcopi uel alterius cuiuslibet persone defuncte exhibitam 
fuisse nullus Exoniensium recordatur. Quid multa? In honorabili loco claustri sui, 
in precioso sarcophago de petra preciso, corpus uenerandum reposuerunt, omnibus 


qui aderant, tam clericis quam laicis, una proclamantibus quod ueraciter ea die cum 
Christo (fol. 97") celos ascendit. 
<xvili> 

Ecce, karissime frater, qualiter honorabilis pater tuus in presentis uite stadio cu- 
currit, quomodo cursu legittime consummato ad brauium feliciter peruenit.2” Te 
uero quoniam patrissare cognoui, multo tibi libentius uitam ipsius utrumque descripsi 
quatinus perpendas non tam laudabile si religiose uiuere contendas quam detestabile 
si, quod absit, male uiuendo a tam religioso parente degeneres. Noueris tamen ut 
promisi summatim ἰδία perstricta quoniam mirabilem illus feruorem, lacrimarum 
abundantiam, sincerissimam religionem, omnimodam puritatem et ueritatem, ex 
quarum fiducia nullam formidabat personam quin libere diceret quod ei dicendum 
sentiebat, aliaque quam plurima Dei dona, que in eo florere conspeximus, puto uerbis 
ad plenum explicari non posse. Siquidem huiusmodi bona spiritualia ex uisu auditu 
cohabitatione collocutione multo magis intelliguntur quam ullis uerbis ualeant insi- 
nuari. Michi uero pro tantillo labore aliquid rependi desidero ut quoniam inter horas 
canonicas ista scribebam (sepe dum ipsis horis instare deberem, de his dictandis 
potius cogitabam), te suppliciter orante non solum huius uerum etiam omnium cul- 
parum mearum ueniam consequar, insuper hanc gratiam tuis precibus (fol. 98) obti- 
neam, quatinus sepe memorati semperque uenerandi parentis tui sanctitatis imitator 
in presenti et in futuro beatitudinis particeps existam. Amen. 


University of Virginia 


86 dolori---imponere : cf. Verg. Aen. II 619. 
3? stadio---peruenit : cf. 1 Cor. 9 : 24. 


The Sin of Brunetto Latini * 


RICHARD KAY 


Η of Dante’s day in Hell had already passed when he came to 

a plain of sterile sand upon which fire perpetually fell in flakes like 
snow. When he arrived, he knew in a general way what sins were punished 
on this desert. Somewhat earlier, Virgil had explained that the circle 
through which they were now passing contained those who had injured 
someone by force rather than by fraud. The crimes of violence punished 
in this seventh circle were of three kinds, corresponding to the three par- 
ties to whom injury could possibly be done: injuries to one’s fellow man, 
injuries to one’s self, and injuries to God. The seventh circle was accor- 
dingly subdivided into three rings. The first was the river Phlegethon, a 
ring of boiling blood, in which were plunged tyrants, murderers, bandits, 
and merciless soldiers, who all had done violence to their neighbors (Inf. 
x11). In the second ring lay the dolorous wood of bleeding trees that were 
the souls of those who had destroyed their bodies (xu). In accordance with 
the Roman legal concept that a man’s property is an extension of his body, 
profligates who had wantonly wasted their substance were also punished 
in the wood, through which they were forever pursued by a pack of hell- 
hounds. 

As Dante passed from the wood of the suicides and approached the third 
and final ring of the circle of the violent, he may have recalled Virgil’s 
description of the sins punished there. And so may the reader, for it is 
the only explicit definition he will be given in the poem: “Violence can be 
done against the Deity by denying and blaspheming Him with the heart, 
and by despising His Goodness in nature; and hence the smallest ring leaves 
its mark on Sodom and Cahors and whoever, despising God with his heart, 
speaks.” 


' * Dedicated to the memory of Robert Leonard Reynolds. An earlier version was read at the 
Third Biennial Conference on Medieval Studies (March 1966) sponsored by the Medieval Insti- 
tute of Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. 

1 The original will regularly be quoted from Dante’s Opere; testo critico della Societa dantesca 
italiana (2nd ed., Florence, 1960). The translations are based on that of John Aitken Carlyle 
(1849, rev. 1867) as rev. with notes by H. Oelsner for the Temple Classics, The Inferno of Dante 
Alighieri (London, 1900), although improvements have often been tacitly introduced. 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 263 


Puossi far forza ne la deitade, 
col cuor negando e bestemmiando quella, 
e spregiando [’n] natura sua bontade; 
e perd lo minor giron suggella 
del segno suo e Soddoma e Caorsa 
e chi, spregiando Dio col cor, favella. (κι. 46-51) 


Just as in the two preceding rings an injury to property was treated as an 
injury to its owner, so here an offense against nature is an injury to nature’s 
Creator. A life contrary to nature is an indirect denial of God Himself. 
Virgil explained that his broad definition of injury to God included not 
only the sin of blasphemy but also the sins of sodomy and usury, or to 
repeat his precise words, the ring “seals with its sign both Sodom and Ca- 
hors.” 

Arriving at the plain itself, Dante found a scene reminiscent of the des- 
truction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis x1x, 23-25). Suffering there 
beneath an eternal rain of fire were three groups of sinners, each with a 
characteristic action. 

Supin giacea in terra alcuna gente; 


alcuna si sedea tutta raccolta, 
e altra andava continuamente. (xv. 22-24) 


The blasphemers, who once had exalted themselves by daring to judge 
God, now were literally abased in their particular mode of punishment, for 
here they were laid low, prone upon the burning sands. The usurers sat 
huddled up in a place apart, on the very edge of the precipice, motionless 
even as they had lived without laboring. Both the supine blasphemers 
and the squatting usurers remain forever fixed in one spot, but the third 
class of sinners must run forever. They do not all run together, however, 
for Dante met two bands of runners, and there may well have been more. 

What was the sin of these runners? That, I think, is a good question. 
Most critics find the answer self-evident and the subject embarrassing. 


2 André Pézard is a distinguished exception: his Sorbonne dissertation, Dante sous la pluie de 
feu (Enfer, chant xv, Etudes de philosophie médiévale, 40 (Paris, 1950), strives with ingenuity 
and erudition to reverse the verdict of sodomy, marshalling historical and philological evidence 
for 408 dense pages in support of the thesis that the sin was blasphemy. The crux of this inter- 
pretation is the alleged blasphemy of Brunetto, which consisted in his intentional glorification 
of French, to him a foreign language, at the expense of Italian, his God-given mother tongue (p. 95). 
Although the thesis itself has found little acceptance, the book remains a mine of insight and evi- 
dence, which have saved me much effort and spared my readers many footnotes as long as this 
one. My own views, however, were formed before reading the book. Pézard’s approach differs 
frommine in that he does not seek a sin common to all the runners; rather, in his view, the nobles 
of Inf. xv1 remain sodomites. 

For further criticism, consult the reviews cited by E. Esposito, Gli studi danteschi dal 1950 al 
1964 (Rome, 1965), 251. Against these hostile critics, Pézard reaffirmed his thesis in Cahiers 


264 R. KAY 


After all, did not Virgil specify three sins that are punished in this ring — 
blasphemy, usury and sodomy? Since the blasphemers are lying in one 
place and the usurers are sitting in another, must not all the runners be 
sodomites ? This conclusion, however, soon places the commentator in an 
awkward position. The inference is logically valid only if Virgil’s enu- 
meration of the crimes punished on the plain was an exhaustive catalogue. 
It is possible, however, that he selected a characteristic sin from each of 
the three categories to illustrate his definition. If this were the case, the 
runners would include not only sodomites but also those who disdained 
nature and her bounty in other ways as well. From Virgil’s reference to 
Sodom, we may be sure that some runners are sodomites, but not that they 
all are. His ambiguous words provide nothing more than a preliminary 
orientation. Like the pilgrim Dante, we must see for ourselves what was 
meant. 


Dante the narrator describes his encounter with the runners in Cantos 
xv and xvi. For the reader who has anticipated a scathing exposé of 
unnatural vice, they are a disappointment. The sin of the runners is never 
explained. Indeed, neither canto mentions it at all, either directly or in- 
directly. The Virgilian ambiguity remains unresolved. In the absence 
of an explicit amplification of Virgil’s explanation, most commentators 
have taken it literally to mean sodomy and nothing more. 

Now this interpretation is based on a single ambiguous line in Canto 
x1. Cantos xv and xvi, in which the sin should be treated, contribute 
nothing but silence. But if the interpretation is correct, it should be the 
key to those cantos. Armed with the hint that the sin is sodomy, the rea- 
der should be able to see the sin mirrored in the place and manner of 
punishment, the character of the inmates, and in Dante’s reaction to 
them. But in fact it is hard to see that sodomy is the appropriate vice of 
the passage in any of these respects. At best, one may say that the setting 
is reminiscent of the Biblical plain of Sodom. Nothing in the punishment 
itself is peculiar to sodomy. The endless running is appropriate to all 
those who are the slaves of their appetites. If sodomy alone were to be 
punished by a characteristic action, little imagination would have been 


du sud, an. 38, no. 308 (1951), 35-38. In contrast to the reactionary tone of most reviewers, L. 
Portier accepted the need for reinterpretation but suggested essential modifications in Pézard’s 
approach: Reoue des études italiennes, N. S., 1 (1954), 5-19. This perceptive discussion anticipated 
my own line of argument without pursuing it. Pézard in his book gives a conspectus of previous 
interpretations (pp. 29-57) and a copious bibliography, now updated by Esposito for Inf. xv 
at pp. 249-251. 

3 Ἐς; Mazzoni typifies the consensus on Inf. x1. 46-51: “la chiara precisazione” of the passage 
places the sin of the runners beyond question: Studi danteschi, 30 (1951), 278-284, esp. 282. 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 965 


required to provide a more striking image. Some commentators have ob- 
served the generality of the imagery, from which they have concluded that 
“the Sodomites are chosen as the image of all perverse vices which damage 
and corrupt the natural powers of the body.” Nonetheless, they continue 
to suppose that those runners whom Dante encountered were in fact so- 
domites. 

If that was what Dante intended, then some distinction between kinds 
of sodomy should be the basis of his classification of the runners. As he 
and Virgil crossed the plain, they encountered two distinct groups of run- 
ners. They were told explicitly that the members of the first band “all 
were clerks, either great Latinists or of great fame, defiled on earth by 
one same sin.”® 

In somma sappi che tutti fur cherci 


e litterati grandi e di gran fama, 
d’un peccato medesmo al mondo lerci. (xv. 106-108) 


Dante’s informant was the Florentine scholar Brunetto Latini, who re- 
cognized Dante and lingered behind the first band to trot alongside his 
former protegé. Among his fellow sufferers, he identified only two by name: 
Priscian, the greatest Latin grammarian, and Francesco d’Accorso, a 
professor of Roman law at Bologna. Contemptuously Brunetto added that 
the bishop whom Pope Boniface VIII had transferred from Florence to 
Vicenza was also in the group, although he was not worthy to be named, 
much less seen. All four conform to Brunetto’s definition: the first three 
were laymen famousfor their learning; the bishop was a clergyman infamous 
for his lack of it. 

The composition of the second band of runners is not explicitly defined 
in the poem, but its nature can easily be inferred by comparison with the 
other. We may be sure that the two groups are mutually exclusive, for 
when Brunetto saw the second troop approaching across the sands, he 
hastily excused himself with the words: “I would say more, but my visit 
and my speech cannot be longer, because there I see new smoke arising 
from the sand. People are coming with whom I ought not to be.” 


4D. L, Sayers, trans. The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine (New York, 1963), I, 164; who 
further observes, “Their perpetual fruitless running forms a parallel, on a lower level, to the aimless 
drifting of the Lustful in Canto v.” 

5 The predicate must be construed so as to be true of all (tutti) members of Brunetto’s band. 
All were clerks largo sensu, all shared the same sin; but not all were distinguished in Latin letters, 
least of all Mozzi, whose gran fama amounted to notoriety if not downright infamy. Pézard argues 
for this translation of cherci (p. 78, ἢ. 3) but on dubious grounds: sages cleres in his example I take 
to be ecclesiastics, in contrast to lay philosophes (Brunetto’s Trésor 1. i. 2). Little or no Latin made 
the illiteratus, even though he both read and wrote in his vernacular: see H. Wieruszowski (of. cit. 
infra, note 27), 187-188. For the early commentators on this passage, see Pézard, 32-33. 


266 R. KAY 


Di pit αἰτεῖ; ma ’1 venire e Ἶ sermone 
pit lungo esser non pud, perd ch’i’ veggio 
la surger novo fummo del sabbione. 
Gente vien con la quale esser non deggio. (xv. 115-118) 


As he hastened to catch up with the first runners, the other group came in 
view. Three Florentines detached themselves from the main body and ran 
to Dante to learn how their city fared, for they knew he was a fellow citi- 
zen by his dress. All three were prominent statesmen in Florence about the 
time Dante was born. Unlike the scholars in the preceding group, they 
were all men of action, the political leaders of the last generation. More- 
over, they were all of the Guelf faction, as was Dante’s father, who shared 
their exile in 1260. Two were of noble birth, but the third, Jacopo Rusti- 
cucci, was not. Only Guido Guerra was a military leader. What all three 
have in common is their prominence in Florentine politics, and particu- 
larly in the Guelf party. The three mention only one person who shares 
their fate: Guglielmo Borsiere (xv1. 70), a Florentine gentleman of Dante’s 
own generation, also a Guelf, with a reputation as a peacemaker and match- 
maker in high society. Like the others, his talents were political, although 
he was more courtier than statesman.¢ 

The runners, then, are divided into two mutually exclusive groups, one 
for clerks and the other for political laymen. Since we are explicitly told 
that the clerks are all being punished for one sin (xv. 108), the politicans, 
too, must have their characteristic sin. What could these vocationally 
determined vices be ? If one maintains that all the runners are sodomites, 
then it should follow that each group has its characteristic variety of sodomy. 
Few recent commentators have ventured thus far, however.’ They are 
agreed that the two groups are differentiated by profession but have had 
little success in finding a characteristic perversion for each. No doubt the 
cleric and academic have always been suspect of pederasty because their 
work with young people offers special opportunities, but so far as I know, 
no one has yet been able to suggest a sexual perversion peculiar to politi- 
cians. Happily for the dignity of all involved, the attempts to find one 
have been few. 

We have reached a point where it is best to change the subject, as has 
been the convenient practice of most commentators, but let us not do so 


ὁ Biographical details and sources conveniently given at Inf. xv1. 37-45, 70, in La Divina Com- 
media... col commento scartazziniano rifatto de G. Vandelli, 19th ed. (Milan, 1965). Editions prior to 
the 9th (1928) quoted the medieval commentators more generously; for these, my references are 
to the 6th ed. (1911): La D. C. commentata da G. A. Scartazzini... riveduta e corretta da G. Vandelli. 

7 Pézard reviews the various explanations for the division into two bands and argues that it is 
not based on profession (69, n. 3; cf. 79) but on distinct crimes which have appropriate punish- 
ments (296, n. 5). 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 267 


before observing that we have been led into this absurdity by a literal inter- 
pretation of Virgil’s reference to the sin of Sodom. Perhaps sodomy should 
be understood figuratively after all. To do so would at least remove the 
hedge of inhibitions that presently surrounds the so-called cantos of the 
sodomites. 

What is more, by not insisting on sodomy, we can resolve an embarrass- 
ing conflict between poetry and history. For not a single one of the eight 
persons placed among the runners has a record of homosexuality outside 
of the Divine Comedy. The grammarian Priscian is the clearest case in point. 
He lived some eight hundred years before Dante, so the poet’s sources must 
have been much the same as ours; but the accusation of sodomy is peculiar 
to Dante alone. Surely it was not his own invention, the critics argue. “It 
is an insult to Dante,” says one, “to assume that he condemns Priscian 
merely because, as a grammarian and teacher of youth, he was specially 
liable to fall into the vice here condemned. There must have been some 
medieval tradition to account for Priscian’s position in this circle.”* Yet 
even so indefatigable a literary historian as Ernst Curtius could not find 
that legend, although he did not doubt its existence. Dante was a contem- 
porary of the other seven suspected sodomites, all of whom were fellow 
Florentines, which has encouraged the comfortable assumption that he 
knew more about them than we do, and hence must be believed. Commen- 
tators and biographers, duly noting that Dante is the only source for the 
accusations, have thought this “a curious fact, considering the prominence 
of Guido” and the others.?° 

In their reverence for Dante, his commentators have not considered 
the possibility that the charge of sodomy was in fact so outrageously false 
that the poet insinuated it with deliberate intent to shock his contemporary 
readers.+ Let us suppose that Virgil’s reference to Sodom was made am- 
biguous on purpose to create in the reader a false expectation. As the 
runners approach, the curious reader wonders who of the many Classical 


8 H. Oelsner, ed. Inferno, 167 at xv. 109. 

9 European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask, Bollingen Series, 36 (London, 
1953), 43, n. 22. The lexicographer Huguccio of Pisa stated that Priscian followed his patron 
Julian into apostasy (“legamus eum fuisse sacerdotem, sed amore [uliani postea apostatasse”’) 
and G. Schizzerotto has recently proposed that Dante misunderstood him to mean amore carnale: 
“Uguccione da Pisa, Dante e la colpa di Prisciano,” Studi danteschi, 43 (1966), 78-83. 

10 J. Ciardi, trans. Inferno (New York, 1954), 147-148; Pézard, 22, cf. 17, 133-135, 203, for 
Brunetto, Priscian, Mozzi; F. C.von Savigny, Geschichte des rimischen Rechts im Mittelalter, Bd. V, 
2nd ed. (1850; reprinted Bad Homburg, 1961), 315, for Francesco d’Accorso; Scartazzini-Vandelli 
19 at xv. 22, xvi. 38, 40, 43, for Brunetto and the nobles. 

12 A similar attempt to disquiet the reader has been discerned by D. J. Donno, “Dante’s Argenti: 
Episode and Function,” Speculum, 40 (1965), 611-625, esp. 622-624. See also Pézard, 23-24. 


268 R. KAY 


homosexuals shall be among them — Hylas, Alcibiades, Caesar, Alexander ἢ 
And who of his own generation? What will be his reaction if the first 
shade he meets was a man of irreproachable virtue? In surprise and dis- 
belief, he will exclaim as Dante the character does in the poem, 


Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto ? (xv. 30) 


“Are you here, Ser Brunetto ?” He should take his cue from Dante and be 
surprised at the discovery that the runners are not the notorious homosexuals 
he had expected to meet.” And in his bewilderment, the surprised reader 
should begin to wonder why he was mistaken. Dante’s commonsense au- 
dience would not be apt to think that Florentine public opinion had been 
mistaken about the morals of seven prominent citizens. Rather, on finding 
that the runners included Brunetto and the rest, Dante’s ideal reader would 
be brought to realize that the poet’s conception of unnatural vice was some- 
thing more subtle than sodomy. Consequently, as he read the rest of the 
passage, this question should have been uppermost in his mind: In what 
sense could such honorable men be said to have sinned against nature ? 
Needless to add, Dante’s original audience contained no such ideal readers 
that we know of. Our hypothetical device was too sophisticated for minds 
habituated to respect the authority of the written word, and hence must 
be accounted as no small psychological miscalculation. 

Before we proceed in our search for the sin of Brunetto Latini, let us have 
well in mind what we are looking for. The range of possible sins is clearly 
set by Virgil’s definition: The runners did violence to nature, which is 
to say they violated some natural law. The only such offense that we can 
exclude categorically is usury, since the usurers are already seated at the 
edge of the burning sands. We have examined at considerable length the 
traditional view that the offense is sodomy. Although there may well have 
been a band of sodomites running about somewhere on the plain, Dante 
does not seem to have met them, for the runners whom he encountered have 
no reputation for that sin in either history or legend. Instead, the two 
groups of runners he met were composed of scholars and statesmen. Each 
group had its own characteristic sin, and neither group dared mix with 
the other. The sin of sodomy does not explain these distinctions, so we 
must seek some other explanation. 


12 Dante’s surprise at finding Brunetto among the supposed sodomites has puzzled the commen- 
tators, for either Dante the pilgrim did know he was guilty and should not have been surprised, 
or else the poet did not know and placed him there unjustly. The dilemma has been ingeniously 
evaded by supposing that Dante did not know in 1300, the ideal date of the poem, but discovered 
Brunetto’s sin before the Inferno was written (1310-14): M. Scherillo, Alcunt capitoli della vita di 
Dante (Turin, 1896), 136; quoted by Scartazzini-Vandelli!® at Inf. xv. 30. See Pézard, ch. ii, and 
esp. 59, n. 1. 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 2969 


One way we might proceed would be to look for another sin, or more 
precisely, two other sins, one for each group of runners. From scholas- 
tic sources we could collect a list of likely suspects and hope to hit upon an 
appropriate pair. Such a method would be based on two assumptions: 
(1) that Dante did indeed have two specific sins in mind, and not a name- 
less class of sins; and (2) that the sins in question were not original with 
Dante but were derived from other sources. Should either prove to be 
false, we would have learned much about scholasticism and little about 
Dante. Happily, greater certainty can be obtained with less risk. Un- 
doubtedly the best approach is to confront the text of the poem directly. 
Now that we have excluded sodomy and defined the question, Cantos xv 
and xvimay appear in a new light when subjected to an explication de texte. 
Such a textual analysis was, in fact, my first approach to the problem, and 
provided an approximate solution. However, in this case the original 
method of discovery is neither the clearest nor the shortest means of ex- 
position. 

The very terms of our problem suggest a shortcut. Essentially, we want 
to know how scholarship and statesmanship are related to Dante’s concept 
of nature. That should explain why he divided the violators of natural 
law into two mutually exclusive groups of statesmen and scholars. The 
answer will be related to Dante’s attitude towards two subjects dear to 
his heart — philosophy and politics. Doubtless his views on both find 
their highest artistic expression in the Comedy itself, but he also expounded 
these subjects explicitly and systematically in two treatises: philosophy in 
the Convivio and politics in the Monarchia. Both abound in problems of 
their own which could easily turn our shortcut into a permanent detour. 
Fortunately we have a guide almost as wise as Virgil himself to lead us 
through these uninviting tracts of scholastic learning. Almost thirty 
years ago, scholasticism’s most distinguished historian, Professor Etienne 
Gilson, was faced with a problem not unlike our own. In a book entitled 
Dante et la philosophie, Gilson sought to explain why the Latin Averroist 
philosopher Siger of Brabant was placed by Dante in Paradise. The argu- 
ment was based on an expert analysis of Dante’s fundamental views on 
the relation of philosophy to theology and politics. These tools, forged 
as they were by the hand of a master, will serve our purpose, and I shall 
proceed to unpack them without further apology. 


13 Dante et la philosophie, Etudes de philosophie médiévale, 28 (Paris, 1939); trans. D. Moore, 
Dante the Philosopher (New York, 1949; facsimile reprint 1963 under the title Dante and Philosophy). 
Although the translation is cited here, the pagination approximates the original within two or 
three pages. The analysis of Mon. 11. xvi below should be read in the context of his full exposition 


270 R. KAY 


Gilson’s basic contention is that Dante had a view of philosophy peculiar 
to himself. To be sure, Dante borrowed concepts from Aristotle, Averroes, 
and Aquinas, among others, but he recast these elements into a new system 
that was uniquely his own. The Banquet and the Monarchy expound portions 
of this original synthesis in formal scholastic terms. The Comedy is based 
on it, and consequently the poem must be interpreted in terms of Dante’s 
philosophy and not those of some rival system, as has too often been done. 
The cantos we are discussing are a case in point. They are based on Dante’s 
singular conception of the goals mankind should strive to attain, and of 
the function of the scholar and the statesman in mankind’s common pur- 
suit of happiness. This conception is fundamental to Dante’s philosophical 
thought, and accordingly it pervades his writings, but its essential outlines 
can be found in the concluding chapter of his treatise on Monarchy. 

The argument is based on the familiar concept that every man is a com- 
pound composed of two parts (partes) — body and soul. Each part has its 
own nature (natura): the body is corruptible and the soul is incorruptible. 
Man partakes of both natures, being neither one nor the other exclusively. 
This double nature of man gives him a double goal, because every nature 
is directed to its own ultimate end. Unique among God’s creatures, man 
has two final goals (hominis duplex finis, duo ultima): one appropriate to his 
corruptible body and the other to his incorruptible soul. Dante breaks 
with the scholastic tradition, and particularly with Aquinas, by refusing 
to reduce the two ends of man to only one by subordinating the good 
of the body to the good of the soul. Instead, he maintains that the two 
are coordinate, each with its own independent fulfillment or beatitude 
(beatitudo). One finds fulfillment in this life, the other in eternal life. 
The happiness of this life consists in the life of reason, the exercise of man’s 
highest and characteristic power (operatio propriae virtutis). The happi- 
ness of eternal life, on the other hand, consists in the enjoyment of the 
beatific vision, which human reason cannot attain unless aided by grace. 
Symbolically, the two states of felicity correspond to the earthly paradise 
and the heavenly paradise. 

Having established a double goal for man, Dante next explains how each 
goal can be achieved. Just as the ends are distinct, so also are the means 
by which man reaches them. Both are attained by the practice of virtue, 
but each has its appropriate virtues. Man gains his earthly happiness by 


closely, it avoids the controversial aspects of his interpretation, which are not essential to the present 
argument. See the review by B. Nardi, “Dante e la filosofia,” Studi danteschi, 24 (1940), 5-42, esp. 
§ 3; cf. notes 18-19 infra. 

14. Monarchia ux. xvi; text as ed. E. Rostagno in Opere (1960), 379-381; useful commentary by 
σ. Vinary, ed. Monarchia (Florence, 1950), 279-289. Expounded by Gilson, 191-201. 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 27] 


living in accordance with the moral and, intellectual virtues. Collectively 
these may be termed natural virtues because they have been discovered 
by human reason unaided by grace.* Human reason alone has been suf- 
ficient to make these ethical teachings (philosophica documenta) known in 
their entirety (iota). They were discovered by the great philosophers of 
antiquity, especially by Aristotle, whose Nicomachean Ethics was for Dante 
the highest authority in this domain.’* A second set of truths guides man 
to his other goal of heavenly happiness. These are spiritual teachings (do- 
cumenta spiritualia) from which man learns how to live in accordance with 
the three theological virtues — faith, hope, and charity. Spiritual truths 
cannot be discovered by human reason but have been revealed to mankind 
by the Holy Spirit through prophets, sacred writers, Christ Himself, and 
His disciples. Unlike the natural truths of the philosophers, these super- 
natural truths are not known to us in their entirety; instead, we know only 
as much of them as is necessary for our eternal salvation.17 

Throughout this argument, Dante has been carefully separating human 
activity into two distinct orders, one natural and the other supernatural, 
based on the twofold nature of man. Mankind, then, has two goals which 
are reached by two paths. The natural truths discovered by the philoso- 
phers using only human reason teach man the virtues by which he can 
attain happiness in this life. The supernatural truths revealed by God 
through His spokesmen teach man the virtues by which he can attain eter- 
nal life through grace. 

Reason and revelation have provided mankind with all the knowledge 
necessary for attaining temporal and eternal felicity. But for Dante, know- 
ledge is not virtue. Man knows his true goals and how to pursue them, but 
he does not act on this knowledge because he is led in the other direction 
by his greed (humana cupiditas). He will never attain his goals unless his 
animal passions are restrained. Like horses who wander at the mercy of 
their bestial appetites, men must be kept on their true course by bit and 
bridle. Providence has accordingly given mankind two drivers to direct 
it to its double destination. The pope leads mankind to eternal life in 
accordance with revealed truth; the emperor directs mankind to temporal 
felicity in accordance with the teachings of philosophy. In the Monarchia, 


15 Thus Gilson, 197, without textual authority for the term virtutes naturales. 

16 Gilson, 134-135, 144. 

17 Mon. 1. xvi. 9: “Has igitur conclusiones et media, licet ostensa βίης nobis hec ab humana ratio- 
ne que per phylosophos tota nobis innotuit, hec a Spiritu Sancto qui per prophetas et agiographos, 
qui per coeternum sibi Dei filium lesum Christum et per eius discipulos supernaturalem veri- 
tatem ac nobis necessariam revelavit, humana cupiditas postergaret nisi homines, tanquam 
equi, sua bestialitate vagantes ‘in camo et freno’ compescerentur in via.” 


272 R. KAY 


the stress is on the need for an emperorwhowill provide a supreme political 
authority over the human community. Mankind as a whole must be regu- 
lated if individual men are to attain happiness in this life, for without the 
necessary preconditions of universal peace and freedom, individual self- 
realization will be difficult, if not impossible. The principal function of the 
emperor is to maintain peace and freedom by restraining human greed. The 
final step in Dante’s argument is the demonstration that the emperor’s 
authority must be derived directly from God and not indirectly through 
the pope. At each stage of his argument, Dante has distinguished the 
natural order from the supernatural. The two hierarchies culminate only 
in God. We need not follow Dante to the ultimate conclusions of his 
treatise, for here we are not concerned with the relationship between the 
two orders but only with the order of nature.!® 

We have been looking for a principle explicitly stated by Dante in his 
philosophic works that will explain the classification of sins against nature 
in Cantos xv and xvi. Why are scholars and statesmen and usurers the 
only professions to violate nature ? And what do the runners have in com- 
mon that distinguishes them from the usurers? And why do they run in 
mutually exclusive bands? Dante’s concept of the natural order provides 
the answers. In the Dantesque dichotomy of orders, philosophy and tem- 
poral government both pertain properly to the natural order rather than 
the supernatural. They are the two coordinate authorities which guide man 
to mortal happiness. Each has its proper function. The philosopher shows 
men the road to mortal virtue and the emperor makes sure that they travel 
along it. The human intellect should be subject to philosophy, but man’s 
will is to be subject to the emperor. One authority governs theory, the 
other practice. Neither has competence in the other’s domain. “Now 
taken together, Philosophy and the Empire govern the entirety of human 
life in the realm of nature, and against them there is no appeal. Within 
this sphere nothing evades their suzerainty, since Aristotle shows men what 
is their natural aim, while the Emperor subjects their wills to it.”29 


18 Qn the relationship between the imperiatus and papatus in Mon. 11. xvi, see M. Maccarrone, 
“Ἢ terzo libro della Monarchia,” ὃ 6, Studi danteschi, 30 (1955), 112-142. 

19 Gilson, 142-151; quoted from 150. The essential dualism of the Monarchia is not endangered 
by the introduction of the authority of philosophy as distinct from that of the emperor and pope, 
as Ernst Kantorowicz supposed: The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957), 460-462. Quite rightly 
he castigates Gilson (190) for applying Mon. 11. xii. 9 (“non potest dici quod alterum subalterne- 
tur alteri”) to the optimus homo as well as to pope and emperor. This minor slip does not, however, 
invalidate Gilson’s exposition of the chapter (189-191), for the optimus homo is not an authority in 
the same sense that the emperor and pope are: the former rules man by virtue of the substantia 
humanae naturae, the latter pair by virtue of their respective relationes dominationis et paternitatis. Thus 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 273 


Those who recognize the authority of philosophy and the emperor as 
man’s supreme guides in the theory and practice of the natural virtues 
will live in accordance with nature. Those who deny the supremacy in 
the natural order of the monarch or the philosopher, will in effect reject 
God’s provisions for the temporal well-being of mankind. They do violence 
to God, to use Virgil’s words, by “despising His Goodness in nature” (Inf. 
x1. 48). In place of the natural authority which they do not acknowledge, 
they will set up for themselves an unnatural authority. Since there are but 
two natural authorities, one governing the human intellect and the other 
the will, perversions of natural authority will also be of two distinct types. 
Any unnatural authority must necessarily constitute a denial either of the 
true authority of philosophy over the intellect or of the true authority of 
the empire over the will. 

This twofold division of the means of doing violence to nature is implicit 
in Dante’s concept of nature. Now we must enquire whether it corresponds 
to the classification of sins against nature in Cantos xv and xvi. We may 
begin by recalling that only the runners are violent against nature alone. 
The usurers who sit at the edge of the burning desert are in a class by 
themselves, as Virgil expressly declared (Inf. x1. 94-111), because usury 
does violence not only to nature but also to art, which should follow nature: 
“And because the usurer takes the other way, he despises nature in itself 
and in its follower [art], since he puts his hope in another.” 

e perché lusuriere altra via tene, 


per sé natura e per la sua seguace 
dispregia, poi ch’in altro pon la spene. (κι. 109-111) 


Violence against nature, then, can be either simple or compound. Simple 
violence against nature alone is the sin of the runners, while compound 
violence against nature and against art is the sin of the usurers. 

As we saw earlier, the runners are divided into at least two exclusive 


Kantorowicz’s schematic representation of the relationship between the three authorities (note31) 
is only a more graphic expression of the distinction between substance and relation in Gilson’s 
original diagram (190). The authority of philosophy is not exercised by an officer but by the philo- 
sophica documenta of Mon. ut. xvi. 9-10. That their authority guides the emperor but is distinct 
from his own is certain from Conv. rv. iv-vi, esp. vi. 17 and there the comment of G. Busnelli and 
G. Vandelli, ed. Il Convivio, 2nd ed., Opere di Dante, 4-5 (Florence, 1953-54). Although the 
authority of philosophy is distinct from that of government, both serve the same natural end — 
the temporal happiness of mankind: “opus fuit homini... Imperatore, qui secundum phylosophica 
documenta genus humanum ad temporalem felicitatem dirigeret” (Mon. ur. xvi. 10). By thus co- 
ordinating the two authorities to a single goal in the natural order, the independence of each is 
assured without creating a tertium hominis ultimum by which the teleological dualism of the Mo- 
narchia would be impaired. 


274 R. KAY 


groups, one containing intellectuals and the other politicians. Previous 
interpretations of the poem have failed to provide a coherent explanation 
of why the sins against nature should be committed only by these two pro- 
fessions. The twofold Dantesque division of natural authority seems to 
provide the principle on which the distinction is based. The politicians 
have refused to recognize the natural authority of the empire, and the 
intellectuals have done the same to philosophy. 

On the face of it, this appears to be a plausible explanation, since the 
professional character of each group in the poem corresponds to the two 
forms of natural authority in Dante’s authentic thought. But can we be 
sure that this is the correct explanation and not merely an ingenious hypo- 
thesis? The architectonic character of Dante’s art should provide the 
means of verification, for we expect that a structural principle employed 
by Dante will govern his treatment of the parts subsumed under it. Since 
we have discovered such a principle that appears to explain the classifi- 
cation of sins in a pair of cantos, it should also explain those cantos in detail, 
just as many another passage in the poema sacro is suffused with the struc- 
tural principles on which it is based. The parts will !elaborate the principle 
and will be appropriate to it; the principle will pervade the parts and give 
them coherence and articulation. In short, the principle, if we have hit 
upon the correct one, should explain the parts as well as the whole. In 
the present case, if the sins of the individual runners can be seen to conform 
to the pattern we have detected, our hypothesis will be confirmed. Let 
us begin with the relatively simpler problem of the three Florentine states- 
men, and then return to the more difficult case of Brunetto Latini himself. 


In our discussion of sodomy, we have already remarked the high regard 
in which the three Florentine statesmen were evidently held by everyone 
save Dante and his commentators. Certainly they had no reputation for 
sodomy outside of the poem, and Canto xvi contains no clear reference 
to that sin. Indeed, when we read that canto without preconceptions, it 
is difficult to see why they are in Hell at all, for Dante emphasizes their 
noble character.2° Virgil sets the tone even before the trio has arrived, 
saying that courtesy is their due; by rights Dante should hasten to them 
rather than they to him (xv1. 15-18). When Dante learns who they are, 
his first impulse is to leap down and embrace them (46-48), but since that 
is impossible, he does the next best thing and plainly affirms that he has 
always held them in the highest respect. His exact words are significant, 


20 To Pézard’s 1950 bibliography, add now that of E. Esposito, Gli studi danteschi dal 1950 al 
1964 (Rome, 1965), 251-255. 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 9275 


for they expressly exclude the possibility of a scandalous reputation: “Of 
your city am I, and ever with affection have I always repeated and heard 
your deeds and honored names.” 

Di vostra terra sono, e sempre mai 


Povra di voi e li onorati nomi 
con affezion ritrassi e ascoltai. (xvi. 58-60) 


Even in their torment, the three remain perfect gentlemen. Although 
bitterly disappointed by Dante’s denunciation of Florentine morals and 
appalled at his bluntness, they speak with dignity and courtesy. 

The contemporary reader might well have wondered why such admi- 
rable men were among the damned, but a careful reading of their speeches 
could have suggested to him the true nature of their besetting sin. Like 
all damned souls, their personalities have been deformed by the charac- 
teristic vice which was the cause of their damnation. In Hell this fatal 
defect continues to pervade their words and actions, and because this is so, 
the nature of the sin can be known through its effects on the sinner. In the 
case of the three Florentines, we do not have to look long for such a motif: 
they are obsessed with fame. This theme emerges quite early in the episode 
as their spokesman, Rusticucci, introduces himself and his companions. He 
identifies the three because he is sure their fame (la fama nostra, 31) will 
impress a fellow Florentine and induce him to answer their questions. This 
appeal to fame suggests the importance which Rusticucci attaches to re- 
putation, but the full extent of his obsession becomes evident only in his 
second speech. Dante the character has explained the purpose of his 
journey with a metaphor: “I leavethe gall and go for sweet apples promised 
me by my veracious guide; but first it is necessary that I fall lowest to the 
center.” 

Lascio lo fele e vo per dolci pomi 


promessi a me per lo verace duca; 
ma infino al centro pria convien ch’i’ tomi. (xvr. 61-63) 


The pilgrimage from evil to good cannot be comprehended in Hell, how- 
ever. Literally, the explanation tells Rusticucci nothing more than that 
Dante must pass through Hell to attain some desideratum. The object 
of the search is unstated, but in hisresponse, Rusticucci assumes that Dante’s 
dolci pomi are long life and fame thereafter. 

“Se lungamente l’anima conduca 


le membra tue” rispuose quelli ancora, 
“e se la fama tua dopo te luca.” (64-66) 


Thus the pilgrim’s conception of human happiness is replaced by Rusticuc- 
ci?s own. By this misunderstanding, he inadvertently discloses his own 
false values: fama for Rusticucci is the crown of life. Only at the end of 


276 R. KAY 


the episode do we learn that his companions also share this obsession. 
Then, as the trio departs, all three in chorus admonish the traveller to “see 
that you speak of us to men — fa che di noi alla gente favelle” (85). Personal 
reputation is their last as well as first thought in the encounter. 

The theme of fame, however, is only one aspect of their character. 
Throughout the scene their primary concern is Florence itself. Rumors of 
its moral decline (70-73) caused them to approach Dante simply because 
he was a fellow citizen. After introductions are exchanged, they get to the 
point: “tell us whether courtesy and valor abide within our city as once 
they truly did, or whether they have departed altogether out of it.” 

cortesia e valor di se dimora 


ne la nostra citta si come suole, 
0 se del tutto se n’é gita fuora. (xvi. 67-69) 


Dante replies that pride and excess — orgoglio e dismisura — the vices op- 
posed to cortesia e valor, now flourish in their stead (73-75).2 Having heard 
their worst fears confirmed, the Florentines have no further interest in the 
conversation and quickly take their leave (77-87). They had come to 
verify a rumor and nothing more. 

We have gleaned the raw materials of an interpretation from the text. 
Let us summarize what can be said with certainty of the three Florentines 
as they appear in the poem: (1) they are men famous in Florence for their 
deeds and honored names; (2) they regard fame as the goal of life; and 
(3) they are concerned that courtesy and valor no longer flourish in Flor- 
rence. Do these data all point to some fundamental sin against nature ? 
Guided by a knowledge of Florentine history, the reader might reason out 
the answer from these established facts, but we shall take a shorter route, 
for the time has come to test our hypothesis. If it is correct, it shall enable us 
to coordinate these data. Let us assume, then, that the sin against nature 
is a failure to recognize the political supremacy of the empire. To be sure, 
nothing in the poem suggests that the three statesmen were distinguished 
for their opposition to the empire, but every Florentine knew it to be true. 
The modern reader may need un peu d’ histoire. 


*1 The opposition of the two pairs of virtues and vices was remarked by Scartazzini-Vandelli® 
at xvi. 74. Cortesia e valor were the two ennobling virtues proper to the knight. Writing of cortesia 
in Conv. 11.x.'8, Dante declared that this virtue is no longer characteristic of the courtly society after 
which it was named: “ne le corti anticamente le vertudi e li belli costumi s’usavano, si come oggi 
s’usa lo contrario....” The interrelated decline of Florence, her nobles, and their virtues as a re- 
current Dantesque concept can be traced conveniently in the apparatus of La Divina Commedia, 
ed. N. Sapegno, La Letteratura italiana; Storia e testi, Vol. 4 (Milan-Naples, n. d. [1957]), starting 
at Inf. xvi. 67-69, 74. Note esp. the identification of knightly virtues at Purg. xvr. 115. 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 977 


These three Florentines were all leaders of the Guelf party during the 
years that saw the climax of its struggle with the Ghibellines in Florence. 
They were the men who fought for Florence and the Guelfs at Montaperti 
in1260,22 and in the wake of that great Ghibelline victory, they fled into 
exile as the first Florentine republic, i/ Primo Populo, collapsed. Florence 
became a Ghibelline city and supported Manfred in his attempt to dominate 
Italy. It was to be the last chance for a union of Italy under the Hohenstau- 
fen and the Ghibellines, if not the Empire. With the defeat and death of 
Manfred in 1266, the Ghibelline cause became an anachronism. The next 
year, the Guelf exiles returned to Florence, and from that day on Florence 
remained a Guelf city.22 Never again was a Ghibelline Florence to look 
to the emperor for leadership. This was the political legacy of our three 
Florentine statesmen, who led the Guelfs through their darkest hour to 
ultimate triumph. For Dante’s generation, which remembered them as 
the leaders who had freed Florence forever from the shadow of imperial 
control, their political career was a singularly appropriate symbol of in- 
subordination to the emperor’s authority. 

From the poem’s ideal perspective of 1300, these statesmen of the pre- 
ceding generation also represented a type of leader that had all but vanished 
from the political scene. All three belonged to the aristocratic wing of the 
Guelf party, which was purged therefrom, or at least deprived of political 
influence, by the Ordinances of Justice in 1293. The old Florentine nobi- 
lity had been a feudal aristocracy whose wealth was based on land and 
whose profession was chivalry. By 1300, economic and social changes were 
making them obsolescent. As a cavalry force they were already obsolete, 
for the battle of Campaldino in 1289 “was the last in which the Florentine 
nobles were the deciding factor.”24 Economically, they were being replaced 
by the middle classes whose wealth was based on commerce and banking. 
Socially, their prestige was also on the wane. The first nouveaux riches had 
sought to assimilate themselves to the old nobility by adopting their ideals 
and way of life. Rusticucci was one of these who became noble in all but 
birth.2° But as the new plutocrats grew in numbers and power, they were 


22 FB. Schevill, History of Florence (New York, 1936; facsimile reprints in 1961 and 1963 under the 
title Medieval and Renaissance Florence), 128-132. Two of the trio, Guido Guerra and Tegghiaio Aldo- 
brandi degli Adimari, play leading roles in G. Villani’s account of the deliberations preceding the 
battle: Cronica v1. 77; 78-81 for the engagement and its aftermath. 

23 On the Guelf restoration of Easter 1267, see Schevill, 138-139, 144; G. Villani, Cronica vit. 
13-15. 

24 C. W. Previté-Orton, A History of Europe from 1198 to 1378, 3rd ed. (London, 1951), 100. 
Schevill, 157-160; G. Villani, Cronica vis. 131-132, vir. 1, linking Campaldino to the Ordinances; 
C. G. Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence (Toronto, 1961), 3-4. 

25 Rusticucci complained that his proud wife was the principal cause of his damnation: “e certo/ 


278 R. KAY 


less inclined to ape the aristocrats, for the military obsolescence of the noble 
knight stripped chivalry of its function, leaving nothing but the social 
graces. Some new men still did seek to acquire noble manners, but in 
Dante’s generation they distinguished themselves as courtiers like Gugliel- 
mo Borsiere (70) rather than as soldiers and statesmen like Rusticucci. In 
short, by 1300 the old aristocratic values of cortesia 6 valor were no longer the 
road to political leadership in Florence. In their stead, hubris prevailed 
because the élite had failed to resist the temptations occasioned by an 
influx of population and wealth. 
La gente nova e i subiti guadagni 


orgoglio e dismisura han generata, 
Fiorenza, in te, si che tu gia ten piagni. (xvz. 73-75) 


The nobles themselves were to blame. Had they remained loyal to 
their traditional moral and political values, the greed of the ignoble would 
have been restrained by the emperor and his natural allies, the local no- 
bility. Instead, the Guelf nobles had allied with the people and brought 
about the destruction of both the authority of the emperor and of their 
own class. What led them to upset the natural hierarchy of authority 
wherein the emperor rules the nobles and the nobles rule the people ? 
Precisely that hunger for fame which obsessed the three Florentine states- 
men. Leadership of the Guelf party offered them scope for their political and 
military talents; partisanship endowed them with an importance they would 
not have enjoyed had the Florentine nobility remained united. Florence, 
too, gained fame as an independent political entity, which she would not 
have enjoyed as a constituent part of the empire. To gain distinction for 
themselves and their city, the Guelf nobles had perverted the natural poli- 
tical structure, which for Dante was the foundation of human peace, justice, 
virtue, and happiness. The result was the disordered Florence of Dante’s 
generation,?* which they themselves deplored in their first words to the 
traveller from “our perverse country — nostra terra prava” (9). In Hell they 
are still enslaved by their false values; they do not appear to realize that 
they themselves had precipitated the ruin of their class and its way of life. 
At this point in the poem, the character Dante also fails to comprehend 
their crime, for the true principles of natural polity are not to be learned 
in Hell. 


la fiera moglie pik ch’altro mi nuoce” (xv1. 44-45). She was, I take it, a social climber whose pride 
pressed him forward in the career which led to his damnation.’ 

26 The foregoing is not objective history but an expositio ad mentem Dantis. For a perceptive ana- 
lysis of Dante’s civic milieu, see M. B. Becker, “Dante and his Literary Contemporaries as Poli- 
tical Men,” Speculum, 41 (1966), 665-680; “A Study in Political Failure: The Florentine Magnates, 
1280-1343,” Mediaeval Studies, 27 (1965), 246-308. 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 279 


When we turn back to Canto xv, its stress on individual and personal 
values is at once apparent in contrast to the societal values of the nobles. 
Dante speaks to only one scholar, to Ser Brunetto Latini, who is portrayed 
in individual detail. The intensely personal character of their interview 
contrasts significantly with the impersonal politeness of the three Florentines, 
who, after the manner of politicians, had regarded Dante as a fellow citizen, 
a presumed admirer, a source of information; in a word, as a type but not 
as an individual. Brunetto, however, recognizes Dante not as a Florentine 
but as himself (xv. 23-24). What he seeks is news of Dante, not of their 
city, for the greater part of the conversation concerns Dante’s future (46-99). 

Like Rusticucci, Brunetto begins by asking “what fortune or destiny 
— qual fortuna o destino” (46) brings Dante to Hell while still he lives. By 
putting the question in terms of Dante’s fortune or destiny, he focuses our 
attention on the part this journey will play in the pilgrim’s later life. 
Dante replies that he had gone astray in a valley, and that when he failed 
to find his way out, Virgil had appeared and is now leading him back 
(riducemi, 49-54). Brunetto pointedly ignores Virgil and instead assures 
Dante that he will gain his goal if he but uses his own natural talents. All 
that another can do is supply comfort (conforto), which he himself would 
have done had not he died (55-60). Like Rusticucci, he has interpreted 
Dante’s figurative description of his journey in accordance with his own 
preconceptions. The goal Brunetto has in mind can be reached by deve- 
loping one’s special talents. In his own words, “If you follow your star, 
you cannot fail to attain a glorious port — Se tu segui tua stella,/non puot 
fallire a glorioso porto” (55-56). Now we know that Dante was born under 
the sign of the Gemini, which astrologers believed predisposed man to a life 
of study and letters.2” In Paradise, Dante himself invoked the twin stars 
as the origin of his genius: “O glorious stars, O light impregnated with 
mighty power, from which I derive all my genius, such as it is — O gloriose 
stelle, o lume pregno|di gran virti, dal quale io riconosco|tutto, qual che si sia, tL mio 
ingegno” (Par. xx1t. 112-114). By telling Dante to follow his star, then, 
Brunetto was urging him to apply his intellectual gifts, to live the life of 
letters as Brunetto himself had done. This life of work (opera, 60) is not all 
that Dante’s fortune has in store for him, however. Prophetically, Brunetto 
adds that fortune has reserved such honor for Dante that he will become 
the envy of his fellow Florentines: 

La tua fortuna tanto onor ti serba, 


che l’una parte e Valtra avranno fame 
di te.... (xv. 70-72) 


27 Sapegno, ed. cit., and Scartazzini-Vandelli!®, both at Inf. xv. 55; Pézard, 126-127; and H. 
Wieruszowski, “Brunetto Latini als Lehrer Dantes und der Florentiner,” Archivio italiano per la 
storia della pieta, 2 (1959), 171-198, at 173, 185. 


280 R. KAY 


He has been so richly endowed by nature that he can expect to achieve 
great things, for which fame shall be his reward. Once again the theme of 
fame is sounded, faintly but distinctly suggesting that Brunetto no less 
than the noble trio works for applause. 

Brunetto imagines that Dante’s goal in life is to win fame through intel- 
lectual achievement, and by the close of the episode, he has made it clear 
that the ideals he imputes to Dante are in fact his own. When he is forced 
to break off the interview in great haste, he condenses his advice to Dante 
into a single self-revealing sentence: “Let my Tesoro, in which I still live, 
be commended to you, and more 1 ask not.” 


sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro 
nal qual io vivo ancora, e pitt non cheggio. (119-120) 


His last and only wish is that his book shall continue to be an influence on 
future generations of scholars. The intellectual lives on in the works he 
leaves to posterity: they are his contribution to the community, but they 
are also his claim to fame. Brunetto’s recommendation reveals that for 
him the stress lay on reputation rather than on contribution. He is content 
with neither the knowledge that he had done his best nor the satisfaction 
of a job well done: above all he must have recognition. Precisely because 
he placed his hope of immortality in his writings, he now fears they will be 
forgotten, and consequently that his fama among men will fade into obli- 
vion. Like the three Florentines, his native talents were wholly dedicated 
to the pursuit of fame: he had worked for the greater glory, not of God, but 
of Brunetto. 

The author of the Trésor sought to gain immortality in the natural rather 
than the spiritual order, and Divine Justice does not deny him his due, for 
in his book he lives on as an influence on its readers. This passionate desire 
to exert an intellectual influence on future generations is given essential 
expression in his parting reference to his book, but it pervades his whole 
character. In Canto xv, it finds its fullest expression in the scholar’s con- 
cern for Dante’s career, which he regards as the offspring of his own.28 At 
the beginning of their conversation, Brunetto twice calls Dante his son 


°8 Helene Wieruszowski argues persuasively (186-189) from the evidence of Brunetto’s Sommetia, 
a small collection of Italian epistolary forms which she has identified and edited (193-198), that 
he lectured publicly at Florence on rhetoric and politics. This removes the traditional objection 
to a literal interpretation of Dante’s indications (Inf. xv. 84-85, 97) that Brunetto was his teacher, 
which now can be understood to refer either to public lectures or private tuition (172-173). Pé- 
zard lists Brunetto’s older biographers; most recent is Bianca Ceva, Brunetio Latini; P'uomo e Popera 
(Milan-Naples, 1965). Charles T’. Davis, in his recent and perceptive study of “Brunetto Latini 
and Dante,” argues that the relationship was informal but the influence nonetheless profound: 
Studi mediaevali, 3rd ser., 8 (1967), i, 421-450, esp. 441 ff. 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 981 


(figliuol, 31, 37), emphasizing by this repetition the paternalistic spirit in 
which he counsels the younger man in the long passage that follows (55-78). 
Moreover, his advice is not altogether objective. As is often the case with 
advisors who seek to live through their advisees, Brunetto tends to maxi- 
mize his own influence on Dante and to exclude that of all others. Brunetto 
would himself have been the best guide in Dante’s work, he seems to say, 
but since he is no longer available, Dante should follow his star to the goal 
Brunetto had foreseen, and in default of the master himself, the ΤΎΡΟΥ will 
guide him. There is the faint but distinct suggestion that Virgil’s interven- 
tion was not altogether necessary, as indeed it was not to achieve the goal 
Brunetto had in mind. The more Dante’s greatness is the product of Bru- 
netto’s, the better the maestro will like it. 

Dante is quick to acknowledge his indebtedness to Brunetto in the most 
touching terms: “Were my desire all fulfilled... you had not yet been ba- 
nished from human nature: for in my memory is fixed, and now goes to my 
heart, the dear and kind, paternal image of you, when in the world, hour 
by hour, you taught me how man makes himself eternal; and while I live, 
it is proper that my tongue should show what gratitude I have for it.” 

“Se fosse tutto pieno il mio dimando” 
rispuosi lui, “voi non sareste ancora 
de Pumana natura posto in bando; 
ché Ἢ la mente m’é fitta, e or m’accora, 
la cara e buona imagine paterna 
di voi quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora 
m’insegnavate come l’uom s’etterna: 
e quant’io l’abbia in grado, mentr’io vivo 
convien che ne la mia lingua si scerna.” (79-87) 


With this speech, Dante confirms the interpretation we have put upon Bru- 
netto’s career, for the poet testifies that for the pilgrim, Brunetto had pro- 
vided the very model of the dedicated intellectual. The crucial phrase is 
the statement that hourly Brunetto taught him come ’uom s’etterna, literally 
“how man eternizes himself” (85). Obviously, this does not refer to the 
eternal life of the soul after death, since man does not attain happiness in 
the spiritual order through his natural powers alone but only with the 
assistance of grace. Man can be the cause of his own immortality only in 
the natural order, where his own powers suffice to attain his ends. On 
earth, then, man can make himself immortal through his works which live 
on after him.2® This was the lesson which Dante acknowledged, and as we 
shall see, it was written in Brunetto’s life as well as in his doctrine. 


29 Sapegno, ed. cit., at Inf. xv. 85. 


282 R. KAY 


But was this dedication to a lifework of scholarship the sin for which 
Brunetto was damned ? A comparison with the case of the three statesmen 
suggests that the ideal is not in itself bad. Rather, it was the desire for 
fame that led them to turn their talents to unnatural ends. The sin itself 
was evident only after we turned from the text to examine their role in 
history, and then judged it in the light of Dante’s concept of natural poli- 
tical order. Let us follow a similar procedure to determine the sin of Bru- 
netto against philosophy. If our hypothesis is correct, his writings should 
pervert the true place of philosophy in the natural order. Dante himself 
has pointed the way, for he has the departing scholar recommend one of 
his writings above all others as his enduring claim to fame, and we may 
suspect that ironically it constitutes his claim to infamy as well. 

The work entitled Li Livres dou Trésor isan encyclopedia written between 
1260 and 1266, when Brunetto was in France as an exile. Itisa relatively 
compact work, filling only 422 octavo pages in its modern edition.2° The 
general character of the Trésor may be illustrated by comparing it with 
two famous encyclopedias compiled about the same time. One, the Specu- 
lum naturale prepared by a team of Dominicans under the direction of 
Vincent of Beauvais, was meant to be a comprehensive work of reference; 
the other, the Opus maius of Roger Bacon, was one individual’s original 
reinterpretation of the scientific knowledge of his day. Brunetto’s work 
occupies a position between these two, for it is the work of one man, as 
was Bacon’s, but the Trésor reproduces its sources almost verbatim without 
any pretense at originality. In contrast to the Speculum, it is a summary of 
knowledge that was meant to be read from cover to cover and not merely 
consulted. Unlike either of its companions, the Trésor was for laymen 
rather than clerics, and accordingly was written in the vernacular rather 
than in Latin. In the introductory chapter, Brunetto explains that he 
used French instead of his native Italian for two reasons: because he was 
in France when he wrote, and because French “is the most charming and 
most commonly known of all languages — est plus delitable et plus commune 
a tous langages” (1. i. 7). 

Carmody has shown that the book is not original either in content or 
in plan, for both are derived from recognized sources.?! If Brunetto com- 
mitted an intellectual sin in preparing such a derivative work, it could only 
be an error of judgment in his selection of materials. A brief description 


30 Li livres dou Trésor, ed. F. J. Carmody, Univ. of Calif. Pubs. in Modern Philology, 22 (Berke- 
ley, 1948). 

31 Carmody, ed. Trésor, xxii-xxxii. 

32 Or in his decision to write in French, for him an alien vernacular, as Pézard maintains: 
94; elaborated in two chs. on “La question de la langue,” 92-130. 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 283 


of its contents will suffice to reveal that fault. The Trésor is divided into 
three books. The first is devoted to the theoretical sciences and the last 
two to the practical sciences. The stress is accordingly on practical know- 
ledge, to which half the pages of the book are devoted. Only two forms of 
practical knowledge are in fact treated: ethics in Book τι and politics in 
Book u1. Brunetto repeatedly explains that the highest of all the sciences 
is the art of government, which is the end to which all other knowledge is 
directed. It is the goal and conclusion of his Trésor as well. For the layman 
who wished to learn the art of government from the ground up, Brunetto’s 
treasury would provide all the knowledge necessary for the practice of his 
political art. The first book lays the theoretical foundations, the second 
teaches the ruler how to govern himself and his household, and the final 
book expounds the art of governing others. Book 111 is subdivided into two 
parts: rhetoric and political science. The inclusion of rhetoric among the 
arts of the ruler is, of course, suggested by its importance in the political 
life of the ancient city-state, and it is duly justified with a citation of Cicero 
(111. i. 2) and buttressed by a false etymology and spelling — rectorique — 
the art of the rector or ruler. In a manual for the instruction of a medieval 
monarch, this stress on rhetoric for the ruler might seem to be a strange 
anachronism, but when we turn to the culminating treatise on political 
science proper, we discover that rhetoric is in fact essential to the ruler 
for whom Brunetto wrote. The head of state he had in mind was not a 
feudal monarch but the elected ruler of a thirteenth-century Italian city- 
state, the official known as the podesta. 

Brunetto introduces his discussion of politics by distinguishing between 
various forms of government. He will treat just one of them, for only that 
one concerns him and the friend for whom the book was composed. This 
type of government, he explains, is that found “in Italy, where the citizens 
and the burgesses and the community of the city elect as their podesta 
and their lord (signour) whomever they think will be most profitable to the 
common welfare (preu) of the city and of all their subjects.”** The treatise 
that follows is a manual on how to be a podesta, probably derived from one 
composed early in the thirteenth century.** Rhetoric, it develops, is a 
necessary administrative art for the preparation of documents, forms for 
which are given in the manual. This was the notarial art in which Brunet- 


23 Tyésor 111. 73. 6, ed. Carmody, 392: “l’autre est en Ytaile, que li citain et li borgois et li com- 
munité des viles eslisent lor poesté et lor signour tel comme il quident qu’il soit plus proufitables 
au commun preu de la vile et de tous lor subtés.” Cf. Ceva, 155-156. 

34 Thus Carmody, ed. Trésor, xxxi-xxxii. Ceva, after an extended analysis (161-183) of the 
three comparable manuals extant, reluctantly agrees (185). On the office of podesta, see Schevill, 
91, and monographs cited by Ceva. 


284 R. KAY 


to himself excelled and which he put to the service of the Florentine Guelfs 
as chancellor of the republic in the years after his return from France. 
For he, like the three Florentines, was a leading Guelf who was exiled after 
Montaperti and returned to share in the ultimate triumph of his party over 
the Ghibellines. He was not an aristocratic statesman but an intellectual 
who not only made his career in the civil service but also taught others how 
to do so. Contemporaries acknowledged the value of his professional ser- 
vices, but they remembered him primarily as the political philosopher of 
the autonomous Florentine city-state. His obituary by the chronicler Gio- 
vanni Villani leaves no doubt that Book m1 of the Trésor, with its double 
emphasis on rhetoric and politics Italian style, quite literally epitomized his 
contribution to Florentine culture.** 


In the said year 1294 there died in Florence a worthy citizen who was 
named Ser Brunetto Latini, who was a great philosopher, and was a perfect 
master in rhetoric, understanding both how to speak well and how to write 
well. And he was the one who expounded Cicero’s Rhetoric, and made the 
good and useful book called Tesoro, and the Tesoretto, and the Chiave del 
Tesoro, and still other books on philosophy and concerning vices and virtues. 
And he was secretary (dittatore) of our commune. He was a worldly man, 
but we have made mention of him because he was the beginner and master 
in refining the Florentines, and in making them clever at speaking{well and 
at understanding how to guide and rule our republic in accordance with 
the art of politics. 


In a word, Brunetto placed philosophy at the service of the Florentine 
commune. For Dante, of course, this was a perversion of the natural order, 
in which philosophy was to provide the intellectual justification of the 
universal authority of the emperor, as he himself did in the Monarchia. 
Philosophy should teach men to be subject to the empire, not how to live 
in municipal autonomy. To instruct the ruler was a legitimate function of 
philosophy, but that ruler should be the emperor and not the podesta. 
This, then, was the sin of Brunetto Latini, that he subverted the natural 


38. Cronica vit. 10: “Nel detto anno 1294 mori in Firenze uno velente cittadion il quale ebbe 
nome ser Brunetto Latini, il quale fu gran filosofo, e fu sommo maestro in rettorica, tanto in bene 
sapere dire come in bene dittare. E fu quegli che spuose la Rettorica di Tullio, e fece il buono e 
utile libro detto Tesoro, e il Tesoretto, e la chiave del Tesoro, e pit altri libri in filosofia, e de’vizi 
e di virtu, e fu dittatore del nostro comune. Fu mondano uomo, ma di lui avemo fatta menzione, 
perocch’egli fu cominciatore e maestro in digrossare i Fiorentini, e farli scorti in bene parlare, e in 
sapere guidare e reggere la nostra repubblica secondo la politica.” Text in Cronica di Giovanni 
Villani, ed. F. G. Dragomanni, Collezione di storici e cronisti italiani editi ed inediti, 1-4 (Flor- 
rence, 1844-45), 1, 17; trans. (here revised) in Villani’s Chronicle by R. E. Selfe, ed. P. H. Wick- 
steed, 2nd ed. (London, 1906), 312-313. Earlier, Villani describes him as “ser Brunetto Latini, 
uomo di grande senno e authoritade” (v1. 73) and lists him among the Guelf exiles of 1260 (v1. 79). 


THE SIN OF BRUNETTO LATINI 985 


order by forcing philosophy into the service of the unnaturally insubordinate 
and autonomous Italian republics. 

Brunetto emerges as the intellectual counterpart of the three Florentines. 
Between them, they have led Florence into political and moral disorder, 
impelled by their desire for fame. Their presence in Hell must have been 
calculated to shock the contemporary reader and urge him to reflect deeply 
on the cause of their damnation, since he presumably knew their reputation 
to be spotless. The Florentine regarded these men as the highest fulfill- 
ment of the political and intellectual ideals of his society. He was right, 
and that was precisely the point. They were truly the product of the so- 
ciety in which they lived, for they valued the good opinion of their fellow 
citizens above all else. To achieve the fame for which they longed, they 
listened to public opinion rather than to nature. Thus they became the 
slaves of the society which by nature they were destined to lead. In the 
context of that corrupt society, their vices were honored as virtues, since 
only in the true perspective of asociety obedient to natural law would 
their sins be evident. Their presence in Hell was an invitation to every 
Florentine to reconsider the values of the society in which he lived and re- 
discover the true principles of the natural order. 

To turn the reader’s thought in this direction, the poet placed a warning 
against the Florentines at the center of Canto xv, as the conclusion to 
Brunetto’s prophecy of Dante’s future (61-78). The words, although ad- 
dressed to Dante, stand as a general warning against the dangers of society 
for the man of intellectual genius. The naturally base part of society will 
hate him for his good deeds, and with good reason, for the sweet fig cannot 
bear fruit among the bitter sorb trees. “An old saying (fama) on earth 
calls them blind; they are a people avaricious, envious, and proud: be sure 
to cleanse yourself of their customs.” 

Vecchia fama nel mondo li chiama orbi; 


gente avara, invidiosa e superba: 
dai lor costumi fa che tu ti forbi. (xv. 67-69) 


Dante, having grown up in corrupt Florence, has himself been tainted and 
must be purged. Brunetto prophesies that Dante will achieve such honor 
that both parties will seek to destroy him, but he will be beyond their reach 
— a veiled allusion to his proud exile. Brunetto concludes with a striking 
metaphor based on the legend that the Florentine people were a mixture 
of noble Romans and ignoble folk from Fiesole: Let the beasts of Fiesole 
forage for themselves and not touch the plant which springs from the holy 
seed of the Romans, if indeed such a plant can still grow up in their ma- 
nure. 


286 R. KAY 


Faccian le bestie fiesolane strame 
di lor medesme, e non tocchin la pianta, 
s’alcuna surge ancora in lor letame 
in cui riviva la sementa santa 
di que’ Roman che vi rimaser quando 
fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta. (xv. 73-78) 
With the discovery of the sin of Brunetto Latini, we have attained our 

main objective. Dante’s conception of the twofold role of philosophy and 
the emperor in leading man to his natural beatitude on earth has provided 
a key to Cantos xv and xvi. With it we have been able to explain the dam- 
nation of the principal characters of the twin cantos. Brunetto and the 
three statesmen now appear respectively as intellectual and political leaders 
who had established a political order contrary to nature. As far as I know, 
the sins of the runners have not been explained before with reference to 
the terminal chapter of the Monarchia; and if I have convinced others that 
this yields a more satisfying interpretation than the traditional one, I have 
achieved my purpose. To hope for more would be rash: the implications 
of such a proposal, like any other reading of so closely integrated a work as 
the Comedy, require long and careful consideration. One critic is unlikely 
to see them all, and each critic will view them in his own perspective; but 
from the ceaseless dialogue of critics, a consensus may at length emerge. 
My hope is that this paper may introduce a new topic into that scholarly 
conversation. Since my intent is to be suggestive rather than definitive, 
I may close with a prospect rather than a conclusion. Of the many ques- 
tions which shall here be left unresolved, the most pressing is the problem of 
Brunetto’s fellow clerks. Can Priscian the grammarian, d’Accorso the civi- 
lian, and Mozzi the bishop each be interpreted as an intellectual who vio- 
lated nature in the practice of his profession ? Because the answer in each 
case requires an investigation of Dante’s views on the profession in question, 
the argument could easily double the length of this essay and consequently 
must be developed separately. That investigation will complete and com- 
plementthe present exploration of the literal-historical meaning of these can- 
tos; the allegory and imagery deserve yet another. These questions I mean 
to treat elsewhere, and doubtlessly other readers will detect implications 
that have escaped me, for did not Benvenuto da Imola long ago blaze for 
us the trail through the selva oscura of Dantology with perhaps the wisest 
single sentence ever written in explanation of the Commedia: “It is rather 
great wit than great learning that is needed for the understanding of this 
book.” 


University of Kansas. 


Four Commentaries on the De Consolatione 


Philosophiae in MS Heiligenkreuz 130 


NICHOLAS M. HARING, 5.4.6. 


HILE it is well known that for many centuries the De Consolatione 

Philosophiae of Boethius was a book which every educated man 

of the Latin world had read and studied, students of learning and edu- 

cation in the Middle Ages have done relatively little to explore the 

admittedly enormous influence exerted by Boethius on the mind of 
Western man.! 

Especially if read with’ the help of a good commentary, the book was 
apt to impart a deeper knowledge and understanding not only of the 
role of divine providence and free will in man’s life but also of the signi- 
ficance of physics, cosmology, astronomy, mathematics, music, and history 
in their relation to the structure of the universe as conceived by Christian 
scholars whose secular learning rested on the foundations laid by the 
sages of ancient Greece. If to the Consolation of Philosophy we add the 
works on music, mathematics, logic, and the Opuscula sacra, all written 
by or at least attributed to Boethius, it is no exaggeration to state that 
for many generations no single author dominated and shaped the Latin 
mind so comprehensively as did Boethius. 

His golden age, no doubt, was the twelfth century with its revival of 
classical studies, its creation of universities, and its novel approach to 
theology, law, architecture, and numerous other branches of human 


1 A comprehensive bibliography will be found in P. Courcelle, La Consolation de la Philosophie 
dans la tradition littéraire (Paris, 1967), 383-402. Special use has been made here of H. F. Stewart, 
“A Commentary by Remigius Autissiodorensis of the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boe- 
thius,” Journal of Theol. Studies, 17 (1915/16), 22-42. Edmund Taite Silk, Saeculd noni auctoris 
in Boetii consolationem philosophiae commentarius, in: Papers and Monographs of the Am. Acad. in Rome, 
9 (Rome, 1935). H. Silvester, “Le commentaire inédit de Jean. Scot Erigéne au métre ix du 
livre iii du De consolatione philosophiae,” Revue d’hist. eccl., 47 (1953), 44-122; R. B. Huygens, 
“Mittelalt. Kommentare zu O qui perpetua,” Sacris Erudiri, 6 (1954), 373-427; E. T. Silk, 
“Pseudo-Johannes Scottus, Adalbold of Utrecht, and the Early Commentaries on Boethius,” 
Mediaeval and Ren. Studies, 3 (1954), 1-40; G. Mathon, “Le commentaire du pseudo-Erigéne 
sur la Consolatio philosophiae de Boéce,” Rech. théol. anc. et médiévale, 22 (1955), 213-257; 
E. Jeauneau, “Un commentaire inédit sur le chant O qui perpetua de Boéce,” Riv. critica di 
storia della filos., 14 (1959), 60-80. 


288 N. M. HARING 


activities without which the course of Western civilization could not be 
explained intelligently. At least in the first half of the twelfth century 
the works of Boethius formed an integral part of the scholastic curriculum, 
including theology, and were commented on in the class room. Many 
a master put his comments or glosses down in writing and thus took up 
a tradition which had been inaugurated by Carolingian scholars in the 
ninth century. 

The manuscript analyzed in this paper is an eloquent testimony to 
the geographical range of Boethius’ influence and to his almost unex- 
pected popularity in a remote Cistercian community whose early members 
must have been largely of French origin and educated in France. Its 
analysis should prove to be a welcome contribution to the exploration 
of a field which is too vast to be the task of a single historian. 

Not satisfied, it seems, with one commentary on the Consolation of 
Philosophy the Cistercian abbot of Heiligenkreuz near Vienna in Austria 
procured no fewer than four different commentaries on the same work. 
Part of the material thus collected found its way to the library of Zwettl 
(Austria) before the end of the twelfth century.” 

The catalogue® of the Stiftsbibliothek of Heiligenkreuz rightly ascribes 
the manuscript with the pressmark 130 to the twelfth century and pro- 
vides a summary of its contents. It escaped the librarian’s attention that 
the volume actually contains not only three but four distinct commentaries. 
On f. lv there is a drawing of a Wheel of Fortune which shows Boethius 
rising to fame and falling into disgrace.t Then follows the treatise on 
the Boethian metres (f. 2-4) written by Abbot Lupus of Ferriéres (d. 
863).5 A short accessus ad auctorem, found on f. 4, is not without interest: 

In exponendis auctoribus hec consideranda sunt: poete uita, titulus operis, 
qualitas carminis, scribentis intentio, numerus librorum, ordo librorum, ex- 
planatio quis quid ubi quibus auxiliis cur quomodo quando. Tria sunt que 


in principiis singulorum librorum apud gramaticos requiri solent i.e. locus 
tempus persona. Locus ubi editus fuerit liber, tempus quo uel quibus regum 


2 MS Zwettl, Stiftsbibl. 363, f. 136-139. Xenia Bernardina II, 1 (Wien, 1891), 427. It contains 
a fragment of a commentary which belongs to the family of the so-called Anonymus Exrfurtensis 
Q5 (f. 136: Carmina gui quondam. Sensus: Ego quondam letus poteram esse...) followed by the 
prologue written by William of Conches (f. 136v). This prologue is followed by the prologue 
of the Anonymus Erfurtensis Q 5 and the tract on the Boethian metres by Lupus of Ferriéres. The 
prologue is repeated on f. 140. The commentary following it (f. 140-166) is incomplete. The 
same MS contains a fragment of a commentary on Macrobius, Comm. in somn. Scipionis (Ε 132v- 
135). 

3 Xenia Bernardina 11, 1 (Wien, 1891), 154. 

* A good reproduction is found in Ῥ, Courcelle, La Consolation, plate 67. 

5 Cf. M. Manitius, Gesch. der lat. Lit. des Mittelalters, 1 (Munich, 1911), 34 and 490. 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 289 


uel principum temporibus, persona quis ediderit librum. Et de persona 
quidem in titulo patet Boetium huius libri auctorem fuisse. Qui ideo quadri- 
nomius in titulo inuenitur quia nobilissimi Romanorum quorum unus ille 
fuit prenomina nomina cognomina et agnomina solebant habere. 


The accessus is followed by a brief description (f 4-4v) of the nine 
Muses. On f. 5 there is a drawing of Boethius reclining on a couch and 
listening to a woman (Philosophy) above whom there is a figure of Christ 
the Teacher. The nine Muses stand at the foot of the couch. Under 
the drawing are the words: “Anicii Manlii Suerini Boetii ex consulari 
ordine patrum philosophice consolationis incipit liber primus.” Twenty- 
two lines of poetry, found on f. 4v, are dedicated to the nine Muses, 
divine Wisdom, and the seven liberal arts. The first poem reads: 


Clio gesta canens transactis tempora reddit 
Dulciloquos calamos Euterpe flatibus urget 
Comica lasciuio gaudet sermone Thalia 
Melpomene tragico proclamat mesta boatu 
Terpsicore affectus citharis mouet imperat auget 
Plectra gerens Heratho saltat pede carmine uultu 
Urania poli motus scrutatur et astra 

Carmina Calliope libris heroyca mandat 
Signa cuncta manu loquitur Polimnia gestu 
Mentis apollinee uis has mouet undique Musas 
In medio residens conplectitur omnia Phebus.® 


The next poem is an address to the eternal Sophia: 


Chere salus cosmoy splendens super ethra sophya 
Queque theologie caput est amarungmata pandens 
Chronos perpetuum dynamys preclara theosy 

Tu Christi logothetha manes. Tu cuncta creasti. 


8 I owe the identification of the two poems to the courtesy of Prof. Bernhard Bischoff. The 
first poem is published in No. 664 of the Anthologia Latina edited by A. Riese. The second poem 
has been published by Karl Strecker, Die Tegernseer Briefsammlung (Froumund), MGH Epp, 
selectae, 3 (Berlin, 1925), p. xii. W. Wattenbach, Das Schrifiwesen im Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1896). 
540, writes: “Fromund schrieb in Céln fir Tegernsee Boethius de consolatione mit dem Gom- 
mentar des Lupus ab.” This copy, later Cod. I, 2 (lat.), 4°.3 of the Firstliche Oettingen-Wal- 
lensteinische Bibliothek in Maihingen, has been lost since the Second World War, as was pointed 
out to me by Prof. Bischoff. According to K. Strecker (p. xi) the MS contained the De Consola- 
lione with many scholia in addition to the tract on the Boethian metres by Lupus. A comparison 
with the detailed description given by G. Schepss, Handschrifil. Siudien zu Boethius De Consola- 
tione philosophiae (Wiirzburg, 1881), 3-47, shows that our manuscript is very closely related to 
the former Tegernsee manuscript which seems to have contained only the first two commentaries 
of the Heiligenkreuz collection. G. Schepss does not mention the poem on the nine Muses 
(“Clio gesta canens”). But the poem on the eternal Sophia (“Chere salus cosmoy”), transcribed 
by Schepss (p. 15), was contained in it together with the poem on the seven liberal arts as 
transcribed by Schepps and in this paper. 


290 N. M. HARING 


These verses are followed by a poem on the liberal arts which should be 
read backwards to establish the proper sequence. The numerous Greek 
words that occur in it are interpreted by interlinear Latin terms. It is 


believed to date back to the Benedictine poet, Froumund of Tegernsee 
(4. 1108 ?), and reads: 


Celestem mathesyn percurrit et astronomia 
Musica perpulcrum profert sistemate cantum 
Practica multa refert sibimet geometrica pulsans 
Ruminat adprime uerborum arithmetica carpos 
Lepidulis uerbis dominam dialectica fatur 
Posthanc rethorice panduntur limmata clare 
Primus gramatice titulus reseratur ydalme.’ 


To the right of these verses we find a short poem on Boethius probably 
composed by the same poet: 

Mallius Anicius residet Boetius. Idem 

Threnon elegiacum Seuerinus personat istud 


Ypatos et consul Rome tum prefuit iste 
Moribus egregiis summis excelluit odis. 


The text of the De Consolatione Philosophiae, which covers f. 5v-76, is 
carefully written in large characters with only 23 lines to a folio. The 
scribe left ample space for interlinear and marginal notes or glosses. 
With a few exceptions all interlinear and marginal entries seem to have 
been written by the same hand.® The interlinear glosses are fairly nu- 
merous and, as a rule, consist of individual words rather than sentences. 
The marginal glosses on both sides of the text are preceded either by a 
letter of the alphabet or some arbitrary sign. These letters or signs are 
also found in the text above the word to which the gloss is related. Al- 
though written by the same hand, the glosses themselves do not seem 
to date back to one and the same author. 

The first interlinear gloss found in the first line above the words siudio 
Slorenite reads: “i.e. disciplina crescente leto opere.” Above Slebilis in 


7 The interlinear notes differ very little from those noted by K. Strecker and G. Schepss. 
They are: “(chere) aue, (cosmoy) mundi, (theologie) diuini sermonis, (amarungmata) que 
sunt amara intellectu, (chronos) tempus, (dynamys) uirtus, (theosy) diuinitatis, (Christi logo- 
thetha) conpositrix sermonis Christi, (mathesyn) doctrinam, (astronomiam) astrorum lex, 
(sistemate) cum constitutione, (practica) res, (geometrica) mensura terre, (carpos) fructus, 
(limmata) i.e. solutiones, (ydalme) scripture.” Prof. Bischoff mentions in his letter that the 
rare word idalmata occurs in Joahnnis Scotti Carmina (ed. L. Traube, in: MGH Poet. lat. medii 
aevi, 3, 532, verse 45). Some of John’s poems are composed in Greek, others contain passages 
in Greek, and others have numerous Greek words within the Latin text. 

8 The text agrees with the transcription published by G. Schepss (p. 16). 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 29] 


the second line we encounter the letter a indicating the first marginal 
gloss. After the letter a in the margin we read: “Quia aliis deflendus 
sum siue fletu dignus.” 

The metrical parts of the Consolation are headed by brief remarks 
concerning the kind of metre used by the author. The prose sections 
are preceded by titles summarizing their contents. Within the prose 
parts the reader will rather frequently find himself faced with Greek 
words which do not belong to the original work as it is known today. 
Such insertions, written in Greek, as physika (f. 24v), epilogos (£ 25), 
paradigma (£. 25v), synkrisis (f. 25v), aitiologia (£. 26), yronia (f. 30v), paren- 
thesis (£. 35), axioma (f. 45v), and others are easy to read and identify. 
Others are much more difficult to decipher. Most of the Greek insertions 
are accompanied by superscript Latin translations. This is also the case 
with regard to the Greek passages quoted by Boethius. In some instances 
(Ε 18; f. 20) Greek words even occur as interlinear explanations of Latin 
words. Hence it comes as no surprise that in the marginal notes Greek 
terms are likewise fairly frequent. 

We are obviously confronted with a commentator who was very familiar 
with the Greek language. Such a commentator was John the Scot who 
is known to have commented on the Consolation of Philosophy. But up 
to date only his commentary on the chant O qui perpetua may have been 
discovered.® 

Apart from insertions of Greek words the reader will also find the 
names B(oethius) and Ph(ilosophia) in the dialogues to identify the 
speaker. Down to the beginning of the third book the marginal notes 
are linked with the text by letters or signs. On f. 28v for the first time 
a lemma is added to the previous device On the succeeding folios 
lemmata become more and more numerous. At the same time glosses 
without such lemmata continue to accompany the text. Beginning with 
Ε 30 the reader will encounter an entirely new technical terminology such 
as a simili uel a maiori or a repugnanti or a parte or probat a contrario or probat 
a partibus. Other examples are probat a toto, probat ducendo ad inconuentens, 
probat a pari, ab effectu infert, infert a descriptionibus, illatio a simili, probatio 
ab inmediato, illatio a causa. 

This terminology is very common in the logical writings of Peter 


9 H. Silvestre, “Le commentaire inédit,” 44-122. 

10 In the gloss on De Cons. III, 2, 50; ed. H. F. Stewart and E.K. Rand (London, Loeb Li- 
brary, 1953), 230: “Quod cetera. Quia isti confiniunt...” All references in this paper to the text 
of the De Consolatione are to the Stewart-Rand edition. 


292 N. M. HARING 


Abelard" who explains these terms at great length in his Dialectica? 
Such loci are also very frequent in the (unpublished) commentary on 
Cicero’s De inventione written by Thierry of Chartres.* They also occur 
in his theological works. In his Commentum, for instance, he inserts such 
remarks as argumentum a contrariis sumptum or argumentum a similibus sumptum 
or ab inductis est illatio.4 In his Lectiones similar insertions are made: 
argumentum ab indifferentia, a contrariis, a simili per contrarium alatio, a stmili 
in altis illatio25 

We shall see later that this novel nomenclature in our marginal glosses 
is due to the use of another commentary. In our manuscript the inter- 
linear notes end on f. 71v, the marginal glosses on f. 75, the text of the 
Consolation'® on f. 76. Folio 76v is blank. 

Another commentary, written by a different scribe, begins on f. 77. 
It is not an interlinear or marginal gloss but a continuous text explain- 
ing lemmaia chosen by the author.1? Its prologue'’ offers a brief life of 
Boethius, sings the praises of wisdom, and blames the followers of a 
magister M. for introducing too many distinctions into the accessus ad 
auctorem. The prologue begins and ends as follows: 


Tempore illo quo Gothorum rex Theo(dericus) Romanam r(em) p(ublicam) 
armis inuasit Boetius Rome multum claruit eique plus omnibus in multis 
restitit. Cumque ille rex perfidus r(em) p(ublicam) ui optineret atque in- 
anem et intollerandam tyrannidem in eam exerceret doluit ualde Boetius ... 
ostentationem fatuorum hominum talibus studiis immorantium friuolum de- 
creuimus (f. 77). 


In the commentary which now begins, the first few lemmata are marked 
by underlining: 
Carmina qui quondam. Sensus: Ego qui quondam letus poteram esse, nulla 


miseria interrumpente, modo cogor ab ipso dolore meo ea que ad miseriam 
pertinent scribere. .Carmina accipe quecumque prius scribebat que sine 


Ἢ See B. Geyer, Peter Abaelards phlios. Schriften, in: Beitrége, 21, 1-4 (1919-1933). 

12 Dialectica VII, 1-2; ed. L. M. de Rijk (Assen, 1956), 253-466. See also Martianus Capella, 
De Nupiiis Philol., V, 474; ed. A. Dick (Leipzig, 1925), 237. Isidore, Eiymol. TI, 30, 1-18 
(Lindsay). 

18 MS Brussels, Bibl. Royale 10057, f. 1-29. 

14 Commentum; ed. N. Haring, in: Arch. d’hist. doctr. et litt. du moyen age, 27 (1960), 90; 107; 113. 

18 Lectiones; ed. N. Haring, ibid., 23 (1958), 139; 140; 145; 147; 171. 

16 The six marginal notes found on f. 76 are later additions and apparently not related to 
the text. 

17 On an average there are 44 lines to a folio. Since f. 77 has been counted twice, the folio 
numbers after the first 77 are here quoted as they should read. Having missed f. 119, the 
librarian’s f. 120-121 need no such rectification. 

18 The prologue is also found in MS Zwettl, Stiftsb. 363, f. 136v. 

19 See also MS Zwettl, Stiftsb. 363, £. 135v. 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHBIAE » 293 


miseria et lamentatione erant quamuis carmina non proprie dicantur ni(si) 


metrice scripta. Quod dicit studio florente metaphora ab arboribus  siue 
herbis... 


Judging by the prologue and the incipit of the commentary we are 
faced here with a copy which belongs to a group of commentaries known 
as Anonymus®® Erfurtensis Q 5. The author of this second commentary 
likewise uses the sort of terminology we met in the second half of the 
marginal gloss. He makes such insertions as: probatio a similt, probat a 
simili, ostendit a parte, probat per partes, ab inmedtatis, a repugnanti, a toto, 
a pari, a contrario, a minori, illatio a partibus, and others." On f. 86 this 
commentary breaks off in the comment on the De Consolatione philosophiae 
III, 2, 60: “Neque enim uile. Probat a contrario ... habere uel esse uolup- 
tatem cum etiam in minimis et terrenis rebus uideamus inesse uolup- 
tatem? ”Then follows the remark: “Require retro.” 

The reader will not fail to notice that this second commentary breaks 
off where, as we have seen, a new type of marginal glosses appears in 
the first commentary. This leads us to the conclusion that the missing 
part of the second commentary was used to provide additional” marginal 
glosses for the first commentary. The conclusion is supported by the 
sudden appearance of lemmata and the technical terminology described 
above. 

Instead of selecting glosses®® on the famous chant O qui perpetua the 
glossator decided to transfer the entire rather lengthy comment from 
the second commentary* to the marginal gloss (f. 37-39v). It begins 
as follows: “Sciendum est quod quicumque de constitutione mundi digne 
tractant tam catholici quam ethnici duos mundos asserunt: unum ar- 
chetipum i.e. intelligibilem mundum, alterum sensibilem uel imagina- 
rium...” It may be impossible ever to determine whether or not this 
long digression was substituted in the gloss for a similar but perhaps 
less satisfactory comment of an earlier period. 

It is quite obvious that, beginning with De Consolatione philosophiae 
III, 3, the first commentary is a conflation of two works. In view oj 


20 The text is closely related to that of the commentary published by E. T. Silk as Saeculi 
noni aucioris ... commentarius (pp. 3-304), now generally referred to as Pseudo-John the Scot. 

21 These topics or loci are equally numerous in Pseudo-John the Scot. 

22 Further research may be able to decide to what extent earlier glosses are mixed with 
passages copied or adapted from our second commentary. 

23 Some initial marginal glosses on Ὁ qui ferpeiua are found on f. 37. They are not continued. 

24 Despite the identical beginning, the text does not fully agree with the corresponding parts 
in Silk’s edition. In fact, variants are so considerable that an edition of the entire text seems 
well justified to promote further research. 


294 N. M. HARING 


the rather prolific use of additional Greek words within the text of the 
Consolato and the use of Greek terms in the glosses, the first commentary 
in its original form may prove to be the work of John the Scot. The 
second commentary originated in the early twelfth century as is evidenced 
by such characteristics as the references to the topics from which accord- 
ing to the glossator the arguments were drawn. It was not copied in its 
entirety because, as we have seen, part of it was used to provide marginal 
glosses for the first commentary. Such a fusion?’ of a ninth-century gloss 
with a twelfth-century commentary would undoubtedly cause consider- 
able literary problems. In our case the question has been greatly simpli- 
fied by the remark Require retro at the point where the second commentary 
ends (f. 85v). 

In the next line begins a third commentary written by the same hand. 
It belongs to the family of commentaries that date back to Remigius 
of Auxerre.** The prologue reads (f. 85v): “Nobiles Romani auspicato 
nomina et prenomina suis filiis imponebant ut in ipsis nominibus origo 
eorum agnosceretur et quales futuri essent in ipsis nobis pretenderetur... 
Patricius dicebatur quod more patrum rem publicam regebat ac amore 
magis quam timore...” The commentary itself begins with the words: 
“Carmina qui quondam. Carmen dicitur eo quod carptim pronuntietur. 
Unde lanam hodie quam discerpunt purgantes carminare dicimus. Fle- 
bilis aptus fletu...” Like the second work, the Remigius commentary is 
not complete. It breaks off on f. 92 after the comment on De Consolatione 
II, 7, 31 with the words: “Caucasus mons est Scithie altissimus ab India 
usque ad montem Taurum.” The manner in which these final words 
are written and arranged shows that the scribe had come to the end of 
his exemplar. It appears that the writing was done by two scribes, for 
a change of hands is clearly noticeable on f. 89v. Folio 92v is blank. 

On f. 93-121 a fourth commentary on the De Consolatione is found. 
It is written by another apparently somewhat later hand and in substance 
dates back to William of Conches. The prologue is missing.2? The title 


°5 The conflation was hardly made at Heiligenkreuz, for the first commentary was written 
by a different scribe who seems to have copied a text in which the combination had already 
taken place. 

°6 See P. Courcelle, La Consolation, 405. A comparison with the partial edition published 
by H. F. Stewart, “A Commentary by Remigius,” 22-42, shows many substantial variants. 
The Remigius-commentary on O qui perpetua has been edited by both E. T. Silk, Saeculi noni ... 
commentarius, 312-342, and H. Silvestre, “Le commentaire inédit,” 51-65. The present edition 
of the commentary on the same chant as found in our manuscript (f. 37-39v) provides sufficient 
evidence to show the close relationship between these commentaries. 

57 The fact that the prologue is found in MS Zwettl, Stiftsb. 363, f. 135, strongly suggests 
that it was not unknown at Heiligenkreuz. 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 295 


reads: “Incipiunt glose in Boetium.” The opening of the commentary 
does not agree with the commonly known incipit. It reads: “Carmina qut. 
Carmen est scriptum de aliquo delectabili cum metro. Studio florente. 
Studium est uchemens animi applicatio ad aliquid agendum.” William’s 
commonly known comment reads: “Carmina. Boetius tractaturus de phi- 
losophica consolatione primitus ostendit se talem qui indigeat consola- 
tione...”28 Definitely part of William’s work is the commentary on O qui 
perpetua which begins on f. 104v: “Phylosophia ostensura B(oetio) in quo 
sit situm summum bonum et qualiter perueniatur ad ipsum, diuinum 
inuocat auxilium...”7° 

The explicit of the fourth commentary confirms the conclusion that 
William is its author. Our commentary ends as follows (f. 121): “Non 
necesse est euenire uelut in hoc exemplo: si ambulat, necesse est moueri; 
sed ambulat, ergo mouetur. Non ergo necesse est moueri quia hoc fal- 
sum est. Sed nunquam falsum sequitur ex uero.” William concludes 
his commentary with these words.*° 

Thus the volume examined here contains no fewer than four com- 
mentaries on the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius. The third of 
them is incomplete whereas the second has been partly incorporated 
into the first. Concerning their authors it can be said that: 


(1) the first commentary (f. 6-76), an interlinear and marginal gloss, 
may be the work of John the Scot enriched with later additions; 

(2) the second work (f. 77-85v), a continuous commentary, belongs 
to the family of the so-called Anonymus Erfurtensis Q 5 and dates 
back to the early twelfth century. It ends abruptly with the com- 
ment on De Consolatione III, 2, 68. The rest of the original text 
was used to add marginal glosses to the first commentary; 

(3) the third commentary (f. 85v-92) is a redaction, it seems, of the 
gloss written by Remigius of Auxerre ;*! 

(4) the fourth commentary (f. 93-121) dates back to William of Con- 
ches. But there are indications that it does not fully coincide 
with the commonly known text of William’s work. 


The texts transcribed below are a small selection of marginal glosses 
found in the first commentary (f. 5v-76). No attempt has been made 


28 Cf. P. Courcelle, La Consolation, 408. 

29 Excerpts from the comment on O qui perpetua are found in J. M. Parent, La doctrine de la 
création dans Vécole de Chartres, in: Publ. de V’Inst. d’éiudes méd. d’Otlawa, 8 (Paris, 1938), 124-130. 

80 Cf. P. Courcelle, La Consolation, 409. 

31 Cf. P. Courcelle, La Consolation, 406. 


296 N. M. HARING 


to correct scribal errors. Lemmata are italicized. We have seen that a 
distinction should be made between glosses preceding and following De 
Cons. III, 2. Down to this dividing line the glosses are not mixed with 
those taken from the Anonymus Erfurtensis Q 5. In view of its importance 
the entire comment on the chant O qui perpetua follows the transcription 
of the glosses with suggestions of sources used by the glossator. 


TEXTS 


(I, 1, 12; p. 130): Propter astrologiam dictum est altius quoddam 

sapientie sacramentum quod nullus mortalium penetrare ualet (f. 6). 
(I, 1, 14; p. 130): Firma ueritate de qua omnis sapientia procedit; 
per indissolubilem materiam uestium probatissimas repertiones intellege 
ut in arithmetica numerorum ratione claret (f. 6). 

(I, 1, 18; p. 130): Pragmatica i.e. actiua. Practicen i.e. actualem. 
Pragma est causa. Pragmaticus Grece negotiator Latine actiuam signi- 
ficat uitam. Theologia contemplatiua. Theorica Grece L(atine) con- 
templatiuum. Unde theos ut quorundam habet opinio a spectando uel 
omnia prospiciendo contemplando dicitur. Theoritis in contemplatio- 
num et actuum nostrorum theologia genealogia dicitur. Theorica intel- 
lectualis (f. 6). 

(I, 1, 29; p. 132): Scena est proprie locus uel habitatio meretricum. 
Inde scenicas ipsas musas apellat quia sepe scenica acta mouent. Scena 
dicebatur apud antiquos locus quo plebs ad spectaculum confluebat. 
Ibi enim ludos exercebant diuersos sed et mulieres inter alia stuprauerunt. 
Quapropter scenice dicebantur ille que ad hoc uenerunt ut concubitum 
uolentibus adhiberent. Scena uero Grece scia i.e. umbra dicitur. Unde 
et illud: Omnis qui agit male, odit lucem (John 3:20). Scena autem erat 
locus infra theatrum in modum domus constructa pro pulpito qui pul- 
pitus orchestra uocabatur. Ibi cantabant comici traici istriones et mimi. 
Dicitur autem scena Greca apellatione eo quod in specie domus erat 
constructa. Unde et apud Hebreos tabernaculorum dedicatio a simili- 
tudine domiciliorum cxenophegya (= scenopegia) apellatur. Ibi enim 
Grecis pudor mulierum infelicium publicabatur et ludibrio habebantur 
et hi qui faciebant et qui paterentur (f. 6v). 

(I, 3, 22; p. 138): Epicurei sunt qui principalem rem in corpore esse 
asserunt. Et Epicurei dicti ab Epicuro quodam philosopho amatore 
uanitatis, non sapientie. Quem etiam ipsi philosophi porcum nomina- 
uerunt quasi uolutantes in sceno carnali corporis uoluptatem summum 
bonum asserentes. Epicurus primitus homo dicebatur, postea Epicurei 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 297 


philosophi qui dicebant summam felicitatem esse uoluptatibus incubere 
(Ε 8v). 

(I, 3, 31; p. 140): Anaxagora philosophus propter sapientiam fugatus 
est a patria et diu exulauit qui inimicorum insecutionibus innocens fugatus 
est. Socrates per anserem iurabat et canem. Unde accusatur. Offerente 
carnifice uenenum bibit. Quod quidem libentissime hausit tanquam 
non mortis sed inmortalitatis sibi esset poculum propinatum. Cui insonti 
ueneni potio propinata est. Zenon cum deprehensus ac tortus esset ut 
coniurationis sue conscios nominaret ... cum eloqui posset linguam sibi 
contra oris claustra morsibus amputauit. Seneca fuit magister Neronis 
inuentorque notarum (f. 9). 

(I, 4, 10; p. 142): Armarium uel copiosus numerus librorum biblio- 
theca repositio uel custodia librorum sed melius librorum mandatum 
nam theca Grece, Latine mandatum dicitur. Duo sunt apud Grecos 
que significant Latine mendatium uel mandatum entole et tece. Entole 
siquidem mandatum de precepto, Tece uero de conmendatione signi- 
ficat. Inde bibliotheca ubi libri conmendantur uel reponuntur (f. 10). 

(I, 4, 14; p. 142): Cursus cum uirga discernens ueluti cum radio, 
astrologiam tangit uel theologiam. Virga philosophorum quia apertius 
cum illa potuerunt indicare quam digito (f 10). 

(I, 4, 19; p. 142): Plato dicitur a latitudine humerorum. Platonis 
sententiam dicit cum doceres nos secundum uoluntatem dei uiuere ad 
cuius imaginem conditi sumus uel similes esse quibus in ratione utimur 
(Ε 10). 

(I, 4, 44; p. 144): Tempore famis cum regis horrea ac principum 
plena essent indicta est iniusta coemptio grauissima a rege. Que res 
cum nimium campaniam profligaret periculo se obponens ne id fieret 
euicit. Forte inminente fame frumenta regis per totam campapiam in- 
iusta coemptio a prefecto pretorum uendita sunt (Ε. 11). 

(I, 5, 40; p. 160): Ostendit fatigatum aliquem ex morbo non statim 
posse fortiora medicamina sumere sed primum molliora ut morbus faci- 
liorem aditum prestet medicamentis. Haut aliter qui corruptionem animi 
patiebatur non statim ualidiori disciplina esse sanandum sed primum 
lenibus et suauibus sermocinationibus resipiscat et postea ualidiori disci- 
plina se corrigat. Metaforam facit ab animali ad inanimale quia quod 
manus medici facere solet hoc ipsum promittit eam facere (f. 15v). 

(II, 1, 21; p. 174): Rethorica est bene dicendi scientia ciuilibus ques- 
tionibus ad persuadendum iusta et bona in rerum personarumque negotio 
causa. Dicta autem rethorica Greca appellatione a potu retho 1.6. copia 
locutionis. Rethores similiter aliquando pro iniustis uti pro iustis ratio- 
nem sumunt (f. 17v). 

(II, 1, 23; p. 174): Nam rethorice prosam, musice uero carmen 


298 N. M. HARING 


conposuit. Musica est modulationis pericia sono cantuque consistens. 
Tria enim sunt genera musice: cromaticum, diatonicum, enarmonicum 
quod est dulcissimum (f. 17v). 

(II, 2, 38; p. 180): Tragedie sunt carmina que constant ex preliis 
mortuorum et deflent miserias hominum (f. 18v). 

(II, 3, 30; p. 184): Sciendum sellam curulem a curru dictam quod 
hii tantum ea utebantur qui triumphali curru inuecti fuissent curules 
magistratus appellati sunt (f. 19v). 

(II, 3, 1 m; p. 186): Stelle dicte sunt a stando quia fixe stant sem- 
per in celo ne cadant. Nam quando uidemus a celo quasi stellas labi 
non sunt stelle sed igniculi ab ethere lapsi qui fiunt dum uentus altiora 
petens ethereum ignem secum trahit qui tractu suo imitatur stellas ca- 
dentes. Nam stelle cadere non possunt. Inmobiles enim sunt et cum celo 
fixe perpetuo motu feruntur (f. 20). 

(If, 4, 101; p. 202): Iuuenalis (Sat. 10, 22) dicit: Cantabit uacuus 
coram latrone uiator (f. 23v). 

(II, 6, 20; p. 206): Muscula diminutiuum a musca quo nomine parua 
animalia uenenifera comprehendit: araneas crabrones quorum morsu 
homines perire solent et pro omni uerme nociuo ponitur (f. 24). 

(II, 6, 31; p. 208): Materia est unde aliquid fit uel in quo formatum 
est. Item materia est facultas. Materies uero est artificiorum, materia 
consiliorum (f. 24v). 

(II, 6, 36; p. 208): Regulus dux Romanorum trecentos captiuorum 
Cartaginensium cepit et ipse postea captus est a Lacedemoniis qui auxi- 
lium Cartaginensibus ferebant. Regulum coegerunt iurare ut Romam 
proficisceretur et de reddendis captiuis ageret. Iurauit se reuersurum. 
Iuit autem et ne redderentur captiui suasit. Reuersus hoc cruciatu af- 
fectus est resectis palpebris in machina illigatus. Vigilando necatus est 
quem Cicero necatum negat supplicio affectum dicens fortune tela fuisse 
non culpe (f. 24v). 

(II, 7, 15; p. 212): Nam Tholomeus philosophus docebat quartam 
partem inhabitari terre ab hominibus et bestiis (f. 25v). 

(II, 7, 30; p. 214): Marcus hoc est prenomen. Tullius est proprium 
nomen. Cicero uocatur ab habitu faciei sue quod scilicet rotundam 
faciem haberet instar ciceris qui est rotundus et pallidam eo quod stu- 
deret nimis sapientie (f. 25v). 

(II, 7, 16; p. 218): Brutus qui primus consul Romanorum fuit qui 
audita uictoria Cesaris cladeque suarum partium nil cunctatus ut in 
sapiente dignum erat mortem etiam letus acciuit. Nam priusquam filium 
comitesque ab amplexu dimisit in nocte lecto ad lucernam Platonis libro 
qui inmortalitatem anime docet Paulum qui eum tum circa primam 
uigiliam stricto gladio reuelatum manu pectus semel iterumque percussit: 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 999 


interueniente filio ausi post hoc uirum medici uiolare. Illo etiam patiente 
dum ascenderent rescidit pectus plagasque secutaque est uis sanguinis 
moribundas maculas in ipso uulnere reliquid anno uite etatis xlviii (f. 26v). 

(II, 8, 15; p. 222): Amor dicitur deus quia res que propria natura 
in semetipsis discordant in ipso concordant. Oblique ipsum Boetium 
tangit pro terrenis opibus cum aduersariis discordantem. Qui talem 
concordiam ceteris facit rebus et maxime celestibus incolis etiam ho- 
mines pro terrenis opibus discordantes ab inmoderata rerum cupiditate 
illorum animos regendo compescit i.e. ne pro terrenis inuicem discordent 
mitigando (f. 27v). 

(III, 2, 50; p. 230): Quod cetera. Quia ἰδ! confiniunt uoluptatem. 
Si aliquit ex istis deerit statim uoluptas desistit (f. 28v). 

(III, 2, 8; p. 234): Virga dicitur uel a uirtute quia in se multum 
habeat uel a uiriditate uel quia pacis indicium est quia uim regat. Unde 
hac utuntur magistri ad placandos inter se serpentes. Hac etiam philo- 
sophi, hac etiam magistri et regum nuntii et legati utuntur (f 29v). 

(III, 3. 35; p. 236): Forum dicitur a fando uel etiam locus ubi iudi- 
ces conueniunt. Forum sex modis intelligitur. Primo negotiationis locus. 
Alio in quo iudicia fieri solent. De quo nunc in isto loco dixit. Tercio 
cum is qui prouintie preest forum agere dicitur cum ciuitates uocat et de 
controuersiis earum congnoscit. Quarto cum id forum antiqui appella- 
bant quod nunc uestibulum sepulchri dici solet. Quintus locus in naui. 
Sed tunc masculini generis est plurale. Sexto fori sed genitiuus et circennia 
spectacula ex quibus etiam minores forules uocamus. Unde et forare et 
foras dare et foras et foros et forecule dicuntur (f. 30). 

(III, 5, 30: p. 244): Papianus scriptor legis fuit. Hinc lex papiana 
dicitur (f. 32). 

(III, 5, 33; p. 244): Seneca opes etiam v. 1. Hoc Suetonius refert. 
Seneca magister fuit Neronis qui notas adinuenit. Factus autem impe- 
rator fingebat se quasi magistrum ita illum timere ueluti in puericia. 
Unde nacta occasione mandauit ut sibi genus mortis eligeret eo quod 
non posset uiuere. Ile cibo potuque se satians uenam utriusque brachii 
incidi fecit et de anulo bibens interiit. Antiqui enim potentes et nobiles 
sub gemma anuli uenenum gestabant ut si quid contigisset ad mortem 
confugerent. Hinc Iuuenalis (Sat. 9, 100): Ut nunquam careas annona 
ueneni (f. 32). 

(III, 5, 2; p. 246): Animus et anima idem est 1.6. substantia qua 
uiuimus. Sed hanc faciunt differentiam: Anima est qua uiuimus, animus 
quo sapimus... Anbrotonos dicitur homo quia brotos Grece cibus. Non 
ergo antropos dictus est quod solus inter omnes creaturas rationali uesci- 
tur cibo. Aut antropon legendum est. Antropos dicitur quasi anatropos 
i.e. sursum uersus. Pronis enim omnibus animalibus terram spectantibus 


300 N. M. HARING 


solus homo suspicit celum erectus. Hinc Ouidius (Met. 1, 84): Prona 
conspectent animalia terram. Deus homini sublime dedit celumque 
uidere. Tussit et erectos ad sidera tollere uultus (f. 32v). 

(III, 6, 2: p. 246): Tragici poete tragedias scribentes quod carmen 
ab hirco tractum est qui Grece tragos dicitur qui pro mercede poetis 
dabatur. Tragicus i.e. luctus. Tragedia conpositio fabulosa uel cum 
asperitate uel luctuose relationes uel bellica cantatio uel fabulatio (f. 32v). 

(IIL, 8. 23: p. 254): Linx est animal quod fertur posse hominis inte- 
riora uisu penetrare. Alcibiadis est nomen mulieris famose pulchritudinis 
quam dicunt matrem fuisse Herculis. Unde Alcideneum uocatum. Sed 
hoc falsum est. Nam Alcides dictus est quasi Alceidos quoniam fortis 
et pulcher fuit. Alce enim uirtus, idea forma uocatur (f. 34). 

(III, 8, 16; p. 252): Elasios mons dicitur. Hinc elephas dicitur quod 
instar montis a longe uidetur. Dicimus autem elephantus, elefanti et 
elephans, elephantis. Sed in plurali numero semper est secunde declina- 
tionis. Tygris animal est uelocissimum adeo ut si insequi ceperit nichil 
euadat, si uero fugere nichil insequatur. Unde et habet nomen. Tygris 
enim lingua parthica dicitur sagitta quia ut sagitta uelociter currit. Hinc 
enim fluuius Tygris uocatur ab impetu cursus. Declinatur autem Tygris 
tigris et tygris tigridis (f 34). 

(III, 9, 15; p. 257): Nam si quid. Probat a pari sic: uere indigens 
est potens. Nam si non est potens, est indigens (f. 35). 

(III, 9, 17; p. 257): Igttur. A pari est illatio. Quando quidem omnis 
sufficiens est potens, ergo una natura est sufficientie et potentie. Simili 
modo probat quod quisquis est potens est sufficiens et dignus et celebris 
et uoluptate habundans. Hec ergo nomina tantum diuersa sunt, sub- 
stantia eadem (f. 35). 

(III, 9, 99; p. 262): In quodam libro qui sic uocatur thimeo. Time 
dicitur Grece animo a potu timui i.e. precioso. Hinc et thimiama dici- 
tur. Plato namque librum de qualitate anime composuit quem thimeum 
uocauit ubi precipit etiam in rebus minimis diuinum implorare auxi- 
lium... (f. 36v). 

(III, 9, 9 metrum; p. 264): Id est Christum qui perfectus erat quia 
omnia per ipsum facta sunt ut ille inperfectas partes distribueret uel per- 
ficeret uel opus quod cum illo iam fuit perfectum licet indistributum quia 
omnia futura apud illum iam preterita uidentur iussit inperfectas partes 
distribui (f. 37). 

(III, 10, 19; p. 266): Quod si uti. Illatio est a toto. Communis 
conceptio. Due conceptiones sunt animi quas Greci ebdomades uocant. 
Ebdo per Ὁ i.e. concipio. Hinc ebdomadas dicitur conceptio. Altera 
communis, altera specialis est. Communis est que a sapientibus et insi- 
pientibus accipitur ut: si iungantur equalia equalibus par numerus pari 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 301 


duo duobus. Quod enim quatuor sunt notissimum est. Specialis est que 
a paucis et tantum peritis congnoscitur ut uoluere celum non omnibus 
notum est, septem quoque planetas (f. 39v). 

(IIT, 10, 20; p. 270): Super hec. Quia beatitudo et diuinitas sunt 
idem. Ergo dabo quasi collorarium i.e. quoddam ornamentum corporale 
torqui aureo quod inferam a superioribus sicut geometre ex quibusdam 
propositis et ostensis solent inferre quedam que uocantur porismata sicut 
si ostensa longitudine in aliquo inferent ex his altitudinem uel aliquid 
tale quod ad auctoritatem ipsius illationis adpositum est. Collorarium 
uocat hoc quod... (f. 41). 

(111, 11, 32; p. 278): Anima dicta est propter quod uiuit, spiritus 
autem uel spiritualis natura uel pro eo quia spiret in corpore. Item ani- 
mum esse quod animam. Sed anima uite est, animus autem consilii. 
Animalia autem siue animantia dicta sunt quia animentur uita et moue- 
antur spiritu. Corpus autem dicitur eo quod corruptum perit. Solubile 
enim atque mortale est (f. 43v). 

(III, 11, 82; p. 282): Aer est inanitas lumen plurimum habens ad- 
mixtum raritati. Dictus est autem ab eo quod ferat terram et ab ea fera- 
tur. Hic autem partim ad terram, partim ad celestem materiam pertinet. 
Nam ille subtilis ubi uentosi ac procellosi motus non possunt existere ad 
celestem pertinet partem. Iste uero turbulentior qui exhalationibus hu- 
midis corpori et terre deputatur (f. 44v). 

(III, 11, 85; p. 282): Ignis uero. In hoc dicitur ignis refugere omnem 
sectionem quia quicquid acceperit in sui materiem conuertit. Si enim 
lignum aliquod igni credamus in sui elementum illud transfundit. Quod 
si lapidem uel tale quid quod non sit cremandum sumpserit, in candorem 
sue qualitatis transiuit et conuertit (f. 44v). 

(III, 12, 26; p. 288): Deum nomino. Deus hebreum nomen est. La- 
tine dicitur timor. Omnibus enim iure timendus est. Timor quippe 
primum deos reperit. Unde Statius: Primus in orbe timor fecit inesse 
deos (Theb. 111, 361). Cum enim Ninus rex patris sui Beli symulachrum 
fecisset aureum, rei quoque ad illud confugierunt. Quos cum ille in 
honorem patris absolueret, aucta est uana religio in deos. Grece autem 
theos quia theoro dicitur uideo. Et deus cuncta uidet. Theo quoque 
Grece dicitur curro, Hinc et deus dici potest quod οποία percurrit uel 
procreat. Ipse tamen semper stabilis est et inmobilis (f. 46). 

(IV, 3, 15; p. 320): Ut Solinus refert, uirtus leonis in dentibus et 
tygris in unguibus constat quia quibusdam capsulis includuntur in eundo 
ne amittant acumen (f. 53v). 

(IV, 6, 56; p. 342): Immobilem simplicemque. Simplex dicitur proui- 
dentia dei quoniam quecumque facta sunt per genera et diuersas spe- 
cies et tempora simul in eo cuncta manserunt. Unde legitur: Qui uiuit 


302 N. M. HARING 


in eternum creauit omnia simul (Zccli 18:1), scilicet per prouidentiam 
(f. 58v). 

(IV, 6, 78; p. 342): Igctur uti est. Tllatio a simili sic: quia aliquid 
quanto uicinius accedit diuinitati tanto magis cum ea conuenit ... quia 
lineam habet qua illud caret (Ε 59). 

(IV, 6, 83; p. 344): Elementum quidam uolunt a Greco diriuari yles 
quod transfertur in Latinam linguam i.e. siluas. Quod si ita est necesse 
fit ut elementum scribatur et sit Grecum culius interpretatio erit materies. 
Rectius tamen intelligi uidetur Latinum uero a uerbo elimo i.e. formo. 
Quod uerbum nascitur a nomine lima. Nam elementa Grece stochia 
uocantur et si ita est ab 6 prepositione inchoat (f. 59v). 

(IV, 6, 19; p. 354): Hec concordia. Ostendit elementorum concor- 
diam que sic temperat ea ut quamuis pugnantia sint tamen cedant sibi 
in uicibus i.e. locis suis ita quod humida i.e. aer et aqua iungant fidem 
1.6. concordiam siccis (f. 62v). 

(V, 3, 55: p. 376): Postremo. Item alia probatio quod illud futurum 
quod prescitur necessario qualiter prescitur eueniat quia aliter scientia 
de ipso non esset scientia sed fallax opinio. Diffinit enim Boetius ita: 
Scientia est rerum ueritatis conprehensio que sunt queque sui essentiam 
inmutabilem sortiuntur (f. 67v). 

(V, 3, 20 metrum; p. 382): An cum. Hic philosophorum sententiam 
tangit qui dicunt quod humane anime priusquam ad corpora descendant 
in conpari stella superposite omnem scientiam habeant, cum uero ad 
corpora descendant parum scientiam illam admittant. Considerandum 
est quod dicit summam tenens singula. Reminiscitur enim anima con- 
carcerata corpori scientie prius habite summam quia scit bonum esse et 
malum et prouidentiam et libertatem simpliciter sed singula perdidit 
quia namque partes boni et mali congnoscit (f. 69). 

(V, 4, 84-89; p. 388): Nam sensus est uis anime que figuram i.e. linia- 
menta humani corporis per aliquem quinque sensibus corporis discernit. 
Imaginatio est uis que eandem figuram absente corpore sine exteriori 
sensu dinoscit. Ratio uero uniuersalem ac specialem proprietatem ho- 
minis que omnibus indiuiduis conuenit perpendit. Intelligentia uero 
ideam ipsius que in mente diuina eternaliter est perspicit (f. 70v). 

(V, 4, 104; p. 388): Sciendum quod ratio dicitur multis modis. Est 
enim ratio nature quod similia scilicet ex similibus procreentur. Est 
et ratio substantie, diffinitio scilicet. Est quoque ratio que uocatur argu- 
mentum. Est et ratio boni et mali discretio. Est quoque ratio uniuersa- 
litatis conprehensio. Iuxta quem modum hic dicitur... (f. 71). 

(V, 4, 115; p. 390): Videsne igitur. Infert ab exemplis. Quandam hic 
sententiam Stoycorum tangit qui dixerunt quod anima nichil per se con- 
sideraret sed cum extrinsecus motu aliquo corporis incitaretur ipsa anima 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 303 


per aliquem corporeum sensum tunc primum in se quasdam rerum notas 
ad modum cere in qua prius nichil esset et ueluti speculum in se cassas 
imagines ipsarum rerum presentaret. Quam sententiam ideo inducit ut 
illam falsificando conprobet quod uidebatur per hanc destrui sententiam 
scilicet quod quisque iudicans non ex aliena ui iudicet sed ex propria 
potestate. Quod proxime dictum est (Ε 71). 

(V, 4, 1 metrum; p. 390): Porticum uocat stoam portam Athenis in 
qua Stoyci philosophantur (f. 71). 

(V, 6, 25: p. 400): Quod igitur. Infert ab inmediato per temporalia 
ab eterno remota. Sciendum quodque tempus secundum quod diffi- 
nitio hic accipitur sic diffinitur: Tempus est transitorie rei fluxum uel 
fluitantis temporis euum. Queritur cum eternitas uere in deo sit tempus 
autem minime in deo esse possit quomodo Tullius in rethoricis (Tusc. 
I, 39) tempus dicit partem eternitatis. Videtur enim quod si eternitas 
in deo est tempus autem proprie pars eternitatis est quod et tempus in 
deo sit. Quod esse non potest. Soluitur autem hec questio. Tullius 
non dicit tempus partem eternitatis quod proprie pars eius sit. Sed quia 
quedam pars dicit designat quoddam spacium scilicet quod cum mundo 
cepit et cum mundo est. Quod uidetur falso ab eternitate concludi... 
(Ε 73v). 

(V, 6, 31; p. 400): Unde non recte. Infert a causa ex eo quod dixit 
illud solum modo quod non haberet preteritum nec futurum esse eternum. 
Plato dixit mundum semper fuisse per ylen que semper fuit et quam eius 
esse materiam dixit nec unquam finem habiturum. Quod est sine dubio 
uerum. Quod quidam erronei audientes putauerunt quod Plato diceret 
mundum deo coeternum. Quod ratione caret (f. 73v). 


COMMENTARY ON DE CONSOLATIONE III metrum 9 


1 O QUI PERPETUA MUNDUM. 


Sciendum! est quod quicumque de constitutione mundi digne trac- 
tant tam catholici quam ethnici duos mundos esse asserunt: unum arche- 
tipum i.e. intelligibilem mundum, alterum sensibilem uel imaginarium. 
Archetipum uero mundum uocat principalem mundum  scilicet concep- 
tionem huius uisibilis mundi eternaliter existentem in mente diuina. 
Imaginarium autem dicunt hunc mundum sensibus subiacentem qui uideri 
scilicet et aliis sensibus percipi potest ad illius eterni imaginem tempo- 


1 Anonymus Erfurtensis; ed. Silk, “Pseudo-Johannes,” 33-34, Cf. Silk, Saeculi noni, 155 ff. 


304 N. M. HARING 


ralem constitutionem habentem. Et huius temporarii dicunt eum duo 
principia primitus fecisse, terram scilicet et ignem quasi ceterarum funda- 
menta quibus ad exempla primorum cubicorum solidam dedit conposi- 
tionem. 


2 Quod sic considerandum est. Primi cubici numeri, scilicet qui a duo- 
bus primis numeris quorum alter est par alter impar, scilicet a binario 
et ternario surgunt.2, Hoc modo arithmetici dicunt quod omnis numerus 
aduerbialiter per se prolatus longitudinem significat, semel inductus in 
se latitudinem, secundo ductus altitudinem. 


3. Ergo si dixerimus aduerbialiter bis, lineam significat i.e. duo puncta 
cum interposita longitudine. Si semel reducamus in se ut dicamus bis 
bini, quatuor puncta significat interposita longitudine. Si item dicamus 
bis bini bis, addimus altitudinem, scilicet aliam parem latitudinem priori 
in altum superpositam. 


4 Et he tres dimensiones uocantur unus solidus numerus uel mathema- 
ticum i.e. doctrinale corpus quia ad similitudinem ueri mathematici et 
solidi corporis quantitatiui tribus dimensionibus constituitur. Dicitur 
etiam cubicus quia equali longitudine per equalem latitudinem ad equa- 
lem surgit altitudinem® ut dicamus ter terni ter. Et constat hic numerus 
in suis dimensionibus xxvii punctis, prior uero octo. Differunt autem hi 
duo cubici numeri inter se dimensione, scilicet longitudine latitudine alti- 
tudine quia si respicimus ad numerum primus in omni parte pares nu- 
meros habet, scilicet sicut alter impares numeros habet. 


5 Ad horum duorum numerorum exemplar immo exemplum fecit deus 
prima elementa predicta, scilicet terram et ignem sic ut singulum similiter 
inter se tribus proprietatibus constituentibus se differrent. Est enim harum 
trium proprietatum ignis acutus subtilis mobilis, terra autem e contra 
obtunsa corpulenta immobilis.> Que tres proprietates ita hic et ibi diffe- 
runt inter se sicut tres predictorum numerorum dimensiones. Quapropter 
rationabiliter Conditori placuit hec duo proponere in constitutione ele- 
menta que a se dissident omni qualitate. Ex quorum proprietatibus duo 
postea creauit media, scilicet aquam et aerem: item ad numeri propor- 
tionem. Quod suo loco inferius ostendetur. Nunc ad litteram redeamus: 


2 Macrobius, Comm. in somnium Scipionis, I, 6, 1; ed. Iac. Willis (Leipzig, 1963), 18. 

3 The following sentences are missing: “Et hic est cubicus numerus. Secundus qui est a 
secundo numero similiter constituitur.” Cf. Silk, “Pseudo-Johannes,” 34. 

4 Macrobius, Comm. I, 6, 3; ed. Willis, 13. Cf Jeaneau, “Un commentaire inédit,” 69. 

5 Calcidius, In Timacum Platonis, 22; ed. J. H. Waszink, in: Corpus platonicum medii aevi: Plato 
Latinus, 4 (London, 1962), 72. Cf. Silk, Saeculi noni, 162. 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE “DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 305 


6 O QUI PERPETUA MUNDUM RATIONE, 


In hac inuocatione ideo philosophia diuinam potentiam per terram 
et celum et ignem primum declarat quia ut prediximus hec prima sunt 
elementa. TERRARUM pluraliter ideo posuit quia quinque sunt zone habi- 
tabilis terre et inhabitabilis uel quia pars terre quam nos inhabitamus 
diuisa est in tres partes:* Asiam Europam Lybiam uel quia terra nostra 
regio est et ideo res ipsa et eius diuersitates magis quam in igne nobis 
sunt note. Aut simpliciter per celum et terram quatuor elementa uult 
accipi quibus omnia constant. Aut per celum angelos, per terram uero 
homines qui in ea habitant.’ 


7 Satorem autem potius quam creatorem deum iuxta platonicam sen- 
tentiam uocauit eo quod Plato et plures alii philosophi dixerunt non ex 
nichilo, ut fides nostra habet, deum summum i.e. tagaton fecisse elementa 
sed fuisse eternaliter duo principia ex quibus creata sint omnia: ylen scilicet 
et ideas. Ylen quidem uocauerunt quoddam chaos 1.6. quandam rudem 
materiam et confusam quam dixerunt fuisse principium mundi constitu- 
tione, ideas uero formas rerum constituendarum positas in mente diuina.® 
Vel satorem dicimus metaphorice ab animali ad creatorem. Per MUNDUM 
accipimus hic uisibilem mundum, non archetipum i.e. intelligibilem, quem 
deus gubernat regit et disponit. 


8 RaTIONE non humana et cito transitoria sed PERPETUA i.e. stabili. 
Perpetuam dicit rationem non respectu dei iuxta quod eius ratio eterna 
est sicut et ipse eternus est sed secundum hunc temporalem mundum. 
Nam cum ratio semper affinis sit rebus de quibus habetur iure uocat 
rationem perpetuam quam habet deus in mundo i.e. qui perpetuus est 
i.e. ortum debet tempori sed fine caret. Differt® enim inter eternum et 
perpetuum quod eternum est illud quod ante mundum cum mundo post 
mundum est: perpetuum uero quod ortum tempori debet sed fine caret. 
Vel aliter dicit sapientiam dei per quem omnia creata sunt et gubernantur. 
Ipse enim Verbum dei filius dei sermo dei et sapientia. Vel perpetuam 
dicit rationem eternam dei dispositionem secundum quam omnia constant 
et creata sunt. 


9 Qui TEMPUS ΑΒ EUO (f. 37v) 


Tempus uocat spatium quod cepit cum mundo et cum ipso est. Et 
tempus diffinitur per fuit et est et erit. Quod tempus dicit samptum ΑΒ 


8. Cf. Silk, Saeculi noni, 174. 

? Stewart, “A Commentary,” 30. 

8 Cf Silk, Saeculi noni, 157-158. 

9 Cf. Silk, Saeculi noni, 158; Jeauneau, “Un commentaire inédit,” 66. 


306 N. M. HARING 


EUO i.e. ab eterno quod cum archetipo mundo in mente diuina est quia 
quemcumque locum in rebus secundum conceptionem illud euum ob- 
tinet i.e. tempus hic secundum essentiam quia quasi imago eui dicitur 
esse. Nam ut euum semper et eternaliter est et in uno statu inmobile ita 
tempus quoque perpetuo est fluitans. Et hoc modo procedit ΑΒ Evo. 


10 Quod Tempus deus iubet 18Ὲ i.e. ita fluere per annos et cetera tem- 
pora ut tantum maneat. Sicut enim euum illic stando manet ita hic 
tempus fluendo manet. In quo etiam potest dici sumptum AB EUO. 
Vel aliter ΑΒ EUO i.e. ex quo dixisti fiat lux quia tunc cepit reuolutio 
temporis esse. Nam ante non erat tempus sed euum i.e. perpetuitas 
quedam cum euum Greci dicunt perpetuum. Et ΒΕ est currere uni- 
formiter. 


11 Das i.e. facis cuNcrA MOUERI i.e. cuncta que das facis loco uel tem- 
pore moueri. Nam omnia corporalia loco similiter et tempore mouentur. 
Spiritalia uero ut anima tempore tantum non autem loco mouentur.”® 
Deus uero neque loco neque tempore mouetur sed omnem locum maies- 
tate sua conplet et omnia simul in co sunt tempora. Per cuncra que 
mouentur accipiemus omnia mundana mutabilia. Et bene dixit MOUERI 
et non destrui quia ut dicunt philosophi® nichil destruetur in mundo 
penitus sed per contectionem et recontextionem fit uariatio rerum ut 
terra attenuata transit in aquam et aqua attenuata transit in aerem, 
et aer attenuatus in ignem. Item e conuerso per retectionem ignis spis- 
satus redit in aerem, aer spissatus in aquam, aqua spissata in terram. 
Similiter potest considerari in aliis mundanis. 


12 QUEM NON EXTERNE. 


Hoc est: te non coegerunt cAusE tibi extrinsecus accidentes ul fin- 
geres mundum sed ipsa tua beniuolentia naturaliter tibi ΙΝΒΙΤΑ non in- 
uidens creature tue ad imaginem et similitudinem tuam formate.2 Ex- 
ternas autem uocat causas necessitates nobis sepe imminentes atque plura 
nos facere cogentes que in deum cadere non congruunt cum ipse sit 
bonum conceptum. 


15 Per OPUS FLUITANTIS MATERIE aut hanc machinam mundanam si 
transitiue dicatur possumus accipere aut si transitiue fluitantem mate- 
riam possumus accipere chaos!® quod suo modo fluitabat quia informe 


10 Cf. Silk, Saeculi noni, 176. 

U1 Calcidius, In Tim. Platonis, 293; ed. Waszink, 296: “Philosophorum omnium commune 
dogma est neque quid fieri ex nihilo nec in nihilum interire.” 

12 Cf. Silk, Saeculi noni, 177. 

18 Macrobius, Sat. I, 8, 7; ed. Willis, 35. 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 307 


erat et confusum. Et! bene fluitantem materiam uocat illam informem 
que in mente dei in primordio fuit antequam mundus feret quoniam 
omnia fluitabant. Neque enim facies terre uel aeris apparebat. Terra 
namque operta erat aqua licet tenui uelut nebula aeris. Que claritas 
non apparebat quia nec erat lux qua illustraretur. Siue fluitantem ma- 
teriam mundi uocat creationem que semper fluit et labitur. 


14 Formam summi Boni uocat filium dei qui est sapientia dei patris 
per quem omnia facta sunt. Vnde scriptum est: Qui cum sit splendor glorie 
et figura. Vel etiam formam dicit illud exemplum et rationem que erat 
in mente diuina ad cuius similitudinem postea mundus factus est. Et 
ipsam rationem uocat Plato ydeas i.e. formas. Sicut!® enim artifex 
archam et domum facturus prius figuram illius in mente preuidet ad 
cuius similitudinem post opus faciat ita formam huius mundi deus sem- 
per in ratione sua habuit antequam illum faceret ad eandem similitu- 
dinem. 


15  Beatus!? uero Iohannes ipsam rationem et dispositionem quam Plato 
ydeas uocat uitam nominat. Antequam mundus fieret in mente dei erat. 
Et antequam celum crearetur in arte uidebatur. In deo autem ipsa 
ratio uita uocatur quia semper uixerat. Vel formam sUMMI BONI uocat 
proprietatem ipsius boni quod est in deo que ualet nos facere bonos. 
Que forma est ei 1NsrTa quia bonum quod nobis accidentale est hoc ei 
substantiale est quoniam non inuidit creature sue faciendo eam ad si- 
militudinem suam. 


16 Vel LivorE CARENS cum dicit innuit quod perfectum sit quod fecit. 
Que enim homines operantur partim propter ignorantiam inperfecte 
fiunt, partim uero propter inuidiam que utraque a deo absunt.!* Scien- 
dum est quod omne opus aut opus est dei aut nature aut artificis imitantis 
naturam. Opus dei non subiacet tempori quia in deo semper inuariabile 
manet. PuLCHRUM MUNDUM quem deus gerit in MENTE uocat archetipum 
mundum qui pulcher i.e. eternus est. 


17 A quo sUPERNO EXEMPLO i.e. ab illo mundo deus ducit cuncra in 
hunc mundum singula quantum res potest pati perfecte hic faciendo sicut 
in illo sunt. Vnde subsequenter hunc uocat imaginem illius cum dicit: 
TU FORMANS HUNC MUNDUM IN IMAGINE SIMILI i.e. ita ut sit imago similis 


14 H. Silvestre, “Le commentaire,” 113. 

15 Macrobius, Comm. I, 2, 14; ed. Willis, 6. 
16 Silvestre, “Le commentaire,” 109. 

17 Silk, Saeculi noni, 156 and 178. 

18 Silk Saeculi noni, 157. 


308 N. M. HARING 


illi alii, Et tu ΠΙΒΕΝΒ PERFECTAS 1.6. integras PARTEs scilicet quatuor ele- 
menta non diminuta sed integre accepta ABSOLUERE i.e. perficere. 


18 LicAs ELEMENTA NUMERIs. Notandum quod dicit perFecras. Dicit 
enim Plato ita hunc mundum a deo quatuor elementis!® esse conpositum 
ut nichil ex aliquo illorum extra relictum sit sed integre ea esse apposita 
ne per accessionem et recessionem aliquam mundus ipse corrumpi possit 
sicut humanum corpus quod constat ex quatuor humoribus quia si alicui 
illorum aliquid accedit uel demitur infirmatur. 


19 Dicit enim Plato quia cum vii motus®* sint uel ante uel retro uel ad 
dextram uel ad sinistram uel sursum uel deorsum uel in circuitu deum 
septimum tantum motum dedisse mundo i.e. circularem propter sui per- 
fectionem nec oportuerit ut ei daret pedes ad aliquid fugiendum aut 
manus ad aliquid petendum aut oculos ad inspiciendum cum omnia in 
se haberet. Item dicit mundum foraminibus non indigere per que aliqua 
indigeret cum quicquid oritur ex ipso iterum redit in ipsum per quem 
omnia apparet ipsum esse perfectum. Vel smmiLt IMAGINE i.e. per filium 


qui est imago et similitudo patris. Vel macine sicut in tua dispositione 
cuncta imaginata erant. 


20 Sciendum quoque est quomodo dicit deum ligare ELEMENTA pre- 
dicta, scilicet terram et ignem, NUMERIS. Quod ad similitudinem dictum 
est. Sicut® enim duo cubici numeri et solidi numeri dimensione inter 
se distantes uno medio firmo et eadem proportione non possunt copulari 
sed indigent duobus mediis ex se confectis ad suam copulationem sic 
deus elementa media ex qualitatibus supradictorum que prorsus inter 
se differunt fecit ad ipsorum firmam copulationem. 


21 Quod* ut planius duos supradictos cubices numeros ad quorum 
similitudinem uel planorum se hec duo extrema habent repetamus, 
scilicet octo et xxvii qui sunt primi cubici numeri nec inter se uno medio 
copulantur. Nam siue accipias ab octo duas dimensiones, scilicet bis 
bini, et a xxvii unam, scilicet ter, et constituas medium ita bis bini ter 
non copulantur per illud aliqua proportione. Nam bis bini ter est xii. 
Bene habet se ad octo sesqualtera proportione quia continet ipsum totum 
et eius alteram partem i.e. medietatem. Ad xx et vii uero nulla se habet 
proportione. Et ideo non ualet una copula ad hec duo copulanda. 


18 Macrobius, Comm. II, 12, 14; ed. Willis, 132. 

20 Macrobius, Comm. I, 6, 88: ed. Willis, 33: “Septem motibus omne corpus agitatur.” 
21 Macrobius, Comm. I, 6, 3; ed. Willis, 18. 

22 Macrobius, Comm. I, 6, 3; ed. Willis, 19. 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 309 


22 Similiter?® quoque si a xx et vii duas dimensiones accipiamus, scilicet 
ter terni, et ab octonario unam, scilicet bis, et dicamus ter terni bis facit 
x et viii et habet se ad xx et vii sesqualtera proportione ad octo uero 
minime et ideo non ualet solum ea copulare. Si autem utrumque me- 
dium inter illa duo ponatur tunc bene eadem proportione copulatur. 
Nam sicut uiginti et vii se habent ad x et viii sesqualtera proportione 
sic decem et octo ad xii et item xii ad octo. Vnde firma est conexio. 


23 Sic* quoque fecit deus aerem et aquam inter terram et ignem que 
opposita sunt ex qualitatibus illorum, aque scilicet duas qualitates dando 
(f. 38) a terra, scilicet obtunsum et corpulentum, et terciam ab igne, 
scilicet mobile. Aer uero duas ab igne i.e. subtilis et mobilis, terciam a 
terra i.e. obtunsum per que similiter copulatur. Nam sicuti terra duas 
qualitates habet communes cum aqua et in tercia differt, scilicet in mo- 
bili, sic aqua cum aere et item aer cum igne. Et ideo firma est copulatio 
que per alteram tantum, scilicet per aquam et per aerem, nequaquam 
fieri posset. Et ideo necessarium fuit et congruum ut quatuor tantum 
deus faceret elementa et non plura quia si pauciora essent perfecte non 
copularentur. Si uero plura, superfluerent. 


24 Potest quoque alia similitudine dici ELEMENTA ligata esse NUMERIS, 
scilicet ad modum planorum numerorum. Plani numeri dicuntur qui 
tantum habent duas dimensiones, scilicet longitudinem et latitudinem, 
ut bis bini et ter terni. Hic uero uno medio possunt coniungi sic: Acci- 
piamus ab uno bis et ab alio ter et constituamus ei medium dicendo bis 
ter firma est copulatio.2® Nam sicut ter terni et nouem habet se ad bis 
ter ie. ad sesqualteram proportionem sic habet se ter bis ad bis bini i.e. 
ad sesqualteram proportionem sic et in elementis. Nam si demus igni 
siccum et calidum et aque humidum et frigidum poterunt hec duo co- 
pulari per aerem qui ab igne calidum recipit et ab aqua humidum. 
Et per terram similiter que ab aqua frigidum et ab igne recipit siccum 
firma copulatione. 


25 Vel®® sic: Tu NUMERIS ELEMENTA LIGAS i.e. coniungis NUMERIS 1.6. 
quatuor monadibus. Nam quatuor sunt elementa quorum coniunctiones 
sunt sex quas Greci zinzuias?? uocant. Quorum quatuor sunt inmediate 


23 Jeauneau, “Un comm. inédit,” 69; Silk, Saeculi noni, 163-164. 

24 Calcidius, In Tim. Plat., 22 and 317; ed. Waszink, 72 and 313.; Macrobius, Comm. I, 6, 
25-28; ed. Willis, 22-23; Jeauneau, “Un comm. inédit,” 70. 

25 Jeauneau, “Un comm. inédit,” 69. 

28 Stewart, “A Commentary,” 31-32. 

27 G. Mathon, “Le commentaire,” 218; Silk, Saeculi noni, 170; Courcelle, La Consolation, 
291; Silvestre, “Le commentaire inédit,” 79. 


310 N. M. HARING 


et due mediate. Inmediate sunt iste. Aer humidus et calidus est. Huius 
caliditas coniungitur caliditati ignis qui est calidus et siccus. Ignis autem 
est calidus et siccus. Huius caliditas aeris caliditati iungitur. Siccitas 
autem terre copulatur que est frigida et sicca. Terra frigida est et sicca. 
Huius siccitas ignis siccitati iungitur. Frigiditas uero aque frigiditati 
nectitur. Aqua frigida est et humida. Eius frigiditas terre frigiditati 
copulatur. Humiditas autem aeris humiditati sociatur. Mediate autem 
sinziue he sunt i.e. que contraria sunt et non possunt coniungisine aliqua 
medietate. 


26 Ignis et aqua contraria sunt elementa quia ignis calidus et siccus, 
aqua frigida est et humida.2* Nam ut frigiditas aque ignis conueniat 
caliditati terre frigiditas est media. Ut autem aque humiditas siccitati 
ignis aptetur aeris humiditas media interuenit. 


27 7 FRIGORA FLAMMIS. 


Terra frigida coniungitur igni ex ea parte qua siccus est. Vel ita 
quasi dicat: ideo sic ELEMENTA LIGAS UT que diuerse nature sunt inter 
86. CONUENIANT, scilicet frigida i.e. aqua et terra, conueniant FLAMMIS 
1.6. aeri et igni que calida sunt: et item ARIDA i.e. ignis et terra conueniat 
LIQUIDIS 1.6. aeri et aque que utraque liquida sunt quantum humida 
sunt. Que conuenire necessarium est ideo NE IGNIS EUOLET i.e. disiunga- 
tur a ceteris. Qui semper alta petit quia ΡΌΒΙΟΚ est. Et ne terra deor- 
sum precipitetur que suo pondere semper ima petit.22 Nam utrum hoc 
fieret mundus stare non posset. Et bene dicit puritatem ignis euolare 
cum omnis ignis ascendat sed ne uolet ultra ipsum firmamentum ubi 
quedam inanitas esse uidetur et sic ne usque in infinitum tendat duobus 
crassioribus elementis, aqua scilicet et aere, tenetur. Sed et terre ponde- 
rositas ne penitus subsidat duobus leuoribus elementis, aqua scilicet et 
aere, tenetur. Sed et terre ponderositas ne penitus subsidat duobus 
leuioribus elementis aqua scilicet et aere tenetur et sustentatur. 


28 Tu TRIPLICIs. 


Hic loquitur®® de mundana anima que TRIPLICIS NATURE est uel 
quia est uegetabilis in arboribus, sensibilis in animalibus, rationabilis 
in hominibus uel quia rationabilis est in discernendo bona a malis, con- 
cupiscibilis in appetendis bonis, irascibilis in malis. Vel alio modo 
TRIPLICIS NATURE est. Dicit enim Plato*! quod dagaion i.e. summus deus 
fecit ex se noyn i.e. uerbum consubstantiale sibi et coeternum. 


?8 Macrobius, Comm. I, 6, 26; ed. Willis, 23. 

29 Macrobius, Comm. I, 22, 4 and 13; ed. Willis, 92 and 93. 
30 Silk, Saeculi noni, 180-181. 

31 Macrobius, Comm. I, 2, 14; ed. Willis, 6. 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 311 


29 Noys uero fecit animam mundi (f. 38v) ex tribus essentiis sic: acce- 
pit noys essentiam tantum eandem et essentiam tantum diuersam et 
essentiam non tantum eandem nec tantum diuersam sed ex utraque 
confectam. Et has tres essentias in cratere quodam simul contriuit. 
Dehinc® septem partes ad modum A littere ex confectione illa consti- 
tuit: primum in summo ponendo quasi unitatem in primam partem, 
deinde in uno latere ponendo binarium et post illum quaternarium et 
sub his duobus octonarium. 


30 In altero uero latere posuit contra binarium ternarium, contra 
quaternarium nouenarium, contra octo xxvii. Deinde quia he partes 
hiantes erant in utroque latere et a se distabant, musicas consonantias 
quibus coniungerentur interposuit. Postea utraque latera coniunxit et 
ad modum cere in longum produxit. Deinde illud i.e. longum in duas 
partes diuisit et ad modum X littere ipsas in simul conposuit et unam 
partem flexit ab oriente per occidentem reducendo in orientem eam 
in circulo. Item alteram flexit ab occidente per orientem reducendo 
in occidentem simili in circulo qui continetur infra priorem circulum. 


31 Quod totum per quedam inuolucra et integumenta 1.6. allegorice 
dictum est. Quod enim noys ex tribus essentiis supra dicto modo ani- 
mam fecisse dicitur, propter has tres potentias fingitur quas habet anima, 
uidelicet quia per intellectum considerat ea que tantum sunt eiusdem 
essentie, scilicet celestia que non mutantur sed semper sunt eadem et 
quia per sensus corporis considerat ea que tantum diuerse sunt essentie 
i.e. indiuidua corpora que semper in mutatione sunt, et quia ratione 
considerat ea que nec tantum sunt diuersa nec tantum eadem i.e. uni- 
uersalia specialia et generalia que nec ascendunt ad dignitatem celestium 
nec descendunt ad uarietatem individuorum quamquam per ipsa in- 
diuidua ascendamus ad ipsa. 


32 Item®*. quod partes eius produxit usque ad septenarium numerum 
et taliter eas posuit ut in uno latere esset cubicus numerus et in altero 
alius quorum alter femina est qui surgit a binario, alter masculus, ille 
scilicet qui surgit a ternario, ideo dicitur ut per hoc notetur illius per- 
fectio quod inde generatur, scilicet ipsius anime. Nam quod ex masculo 
et femina generatur perfectum est. 


33 Cubicus numerus surgens a ternario ideo mas dicitur quia et ipse 
totus et eius partes informantur ab unitate. Nam omnis inpar numerus 


32 Calcidius, In Tim. Plat., 32; ed. Waszink, 82; Jeauneau, “Un commentaire inédit,” 74. 
23 Macrobius, Comm. 1, 6, 7; II, 2, 17; ed. Willis, 19 and 102; Silk, Saeculé noni, 182. 


312 N. M. HARING 


informatur ab unitate. Que unitas tante dignitatis est ut tantumdem 
reducatur in se. Nam si dicamus “semel unus” semel nunquam uariatur 
sed semper unitas tantum manet. In quo tenet formam diuine essentie. 
Vnde et Virgilius ait: Numero deus impare gaudet.%5 


34 Cubicus numerus qui surgit a binario ideo femina dicitur quia sicut 
femina uariabilis et inconstans res est ita in binario prima uarietas pari- 
tatis est. Musicas consonantias ideo deus in anime mundi conpositione 
dicitur posuisse quia musica naturalis armonia anime est. 


35 Sic quoque dicitur illas partes coniunctas in longum extendisse ut 
per hoc primum interuallum, scilicet per longitudinem, notetur quod 
quamuis noys ipsam animam creasset tantum multo inferiorem quam 
sit ipse uel eius pater. Quod uero dicitur illud longum in duas partes 
diuisisse noys et alteram partem per occidentem in orientem circumduxisse 
noys alteram uero per orientem in occidentem propter rationabilem et 
irrationabilem motum quem dedit anime dicitur. 


36 Nunc ad litteram redeamus. ΜΈΡΙΑΜ ideo dicit ANIMAM quia ut 
dicunt philosophi deus animam ipsam in mundi medio ut mundus ipse 
equiremus esset collocauit 1.6. ut equaliter moueretur ipsum firmamen- 
tum in omni parte sui et dein diuisit eum PER CONSONA MEMBRA in quibus 
uim suam exerceret. 


37 Consona*’ MEMBRA uocat celestia corpora rotunda ut solem et lunam 
et alia que circularem motum sicut ipsa anima habent in quo sunt ei 
consona. Que corpora dicitur ipsa anima fabricasse quia maiorem vim 
suam in eis exercet. Hec autem inferiora corpora sicut homines dicuntur 
ipsi angeli quos deus pater creauit fecisse in quibus secundum quod 
magis accedunt ad similitudinem celestium corporum ut in hominibus 
qui in capitis rotunditate celestibus accedunt corporibus maiorem uim 
exercet suam, in aliis uero minorem. 


38 Vel%? aliter TRIPLIcIs NATURE. Vis anime omnem molem corporis 
regit. Philosophi animam mundi solem esse dixerunt quia sicut caleficat 
et unificat anima corpus ita solis calore uiuificantur omnia eiusque calor 
diffusus per creaturas facit eas gignere. Et reuera ut philosophi dicunt 
calore illius omnia gignunt et gignuntur pariter cum humore, deo ita 
disponente. Hinc Ouidius: Fecunda rerum semina uocat.?8 


34 Macrobius, Comm. II, 2, 12; ed. Willis, 101. 
35 Eclogae, 8, 75. 

38 Silk, Saeculi noni, 184. 

3? Stewart, “A Commentary,” 32-33. 

38 Met. I, 419. 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE « DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE » 313 


39 Hic itaque sol TRIPLIcIs NATURE est. Habet enim esse, habet calere, 
habet splendere. Sol enim medius inter planetas. Primus enim satur- 
nus deinde iuppiter inde mars. Hi sunt superiores. Et quartus est sol. 
Sub eo uero reliqui tres: uenus mercurius et luna. MEDIAM ANIMAM 
dicit non quod a meditullio corporis i.e. ab umbilico sit porrecta sed 
quia in corde sedes illius sit proprie ubi est pontificium uite. 


40 Aut certe media dicitur quod sit anima rationalis media inter (f. 
39) animam pecudum et spiritum angelorum. Omnis autem spiritus 
aut cum carne tegitur aut cum carne moritur aut cum carne tegitur sed 
cum carne non moritur aut nec carne tegitur nec moritur. Prudentio- 
ribus autem uidetur hoc loco animam rationabilem debere intelligi. 
Que magnam concordiam habet cum mundo. Anima*® et homo grece 
microcosmus dicitur 1.6. minor mundus. Sicut enim mundus quatuor ele- 
mentis et quatuor temporibus constat ita et homo quatuor humoribus 
et quatuor temporibus. 


41 Videamus ergo et hominis concordiam. Quatuor sunt elementa 
aer ignis aqua terra. Aer calidus et humidus est et uer calidum et hu- 
midum similiter. Et in puero sanguis est calidus et humidus. Puericia 
calida et humida. 

Ignis calidus est et siccus. Estas‘ calida est et sicca. Colera rubea 
que habundat in adolescentibus calida est et sicca. Terra frigida et 
sicca. Autumnus frigidus et siccus. Melancolia i.e. nigra colera que 
est in iunenibus frigida est et sicca. Iuuentus frigida et sicca. 

Aqua frigida est et humida. Hiemps frigida et humida. Flegma que 
habundat in senibus frigida et humida. Senectus frigida et humida. 


42 Iste igitur mundus habet ANIMAM TRIPLICIS NATURE ut dictum est. 
Est enim rationabilis concupiscibilis irascibilis. Que tria si rationabiliter 
fuerint custodita, iungunt creaturam creatori. Si uero fuerint permutata, 
mentem debilem reddunt. Si illa pars fuerit corrupta que irascibilis 
dicitur fit homo tristis rancidus felle amaritudinis plenus. Si autem ea 
pars fuerit uiciata que concupiscibilis dicitur fit homo ebriosus libidi- 
nosus et uoluptatum seruus. Si autem illa pars anime corrumpitur que 
uocatur rationabilis fit homosuperbus hereticus omnibus uiciis subiectus. 


43 PER CONSONA MEMBRA. 


Armonica enim disciplina corpus humanum compositum est. Hinc 
Sedulius: Et reuocata suis adtemperat organa neruos.*” Dum enim 


38 Silvestre, “Le commentaire,” 119. 
40 Macrobius, Sat. VII, 5, 20; ed. Willis, 417. 
41 Carmen paschale III, 256; PL 19, 660A. 


314 N. M. HARING 


sanum est corpus illa consona est armonia. Statim autem ut dissentit 
egrotat corpus. ResoLurs inmittis infundis. Quer cum secra. Non® 
est anima in sui natura diuisa sed actus ipsius in duos extendit oculos 
ad aliquid contemplandum. Sicque dicitur glomerare suum motum 
ΙΝ duos ORBES et reuertitur IN sEMET ipsam. 


44 Dicunt auctores quod per intuitum oculorum uis anime egrediatur 
ad conspicienda exteriora. Ita tantum se extendit ut statim reuertatur 
per profundam meditationem in se reuoluens agensque SIMILI IMAGINE 
que foris uidet sicut illud uidit exterius uolui. Ita est de aliis rebus in- 
telligendum que prius uidet ac dein meditatur. 


45 Nam cum unus sit sol radios uidetur in diuersam partem diuidere 
cum per rimulas et fenestras ingreditur in ortum et occasum. Vnde 
Salemon dicit: Oritur sol et occidit et reuertitur ad ortum suum. Gyrat per 
meridiem et flectitur ad aquilonem.3 IN SEMET REDITURA MEAT MENTEMQUE 
PROFUNDAM CIROUIT 1.6. eternam dei et profundam dispositionem peragit. 


46 SIMILI CONUERTIT IMAGINE CELUM i.e. equali modo simili semper 
cursu. Vel sIIMILI IMAGINE ut subaudiatur: qualis fuit illa in qua creatus 
est uidelicet in equinoctiali ortu et occasu. CoNvERTIT ie. conuerti 
facit. Nam dicunt quod impetu solis uoluentis contra mundum reti- 
neatur spera celestis semper uoluens ne labatur et pessum ruat. Vel 
ita: IN SEMET REDITURA MEAT in semet ipsam reditura mouetur circulari 
motu et in hoc ΟἸΒΟΌΙΤ PROFUNDAM MENTEM dei patris 1.6. imitatur noyn 
creatorem suum quia sicut ipse idem manet eodem modo ipsa anima 
quantum ad se inuariabilis est suo modo. Et coNnuERTIT ipsa anima 
CELUM in SIMILI IMAGINE i.e. circulariter. 


47 'Tu GAUSIS ANIMAS PARIBUS. 


Hic loquitur separatim de humanis animabus. Non quod intoto 
i.e. anima mundi non sit superius locutus de eis sed quia digniores sunt 
aliis animabus terrenorum corporum. Et loquitur inde philosophice. 
Namque dicunt philosophi quod postquam noys animam mundi ex 
confectione predicta creauit, ex reliquiis humanas animas creauit. Quod 
deo dicitur quia maiorem uim anima in hominibus quam in corporibus 
illis que si non non sunt in regione sua conuenit exercet. 


48 Dicunt etiam quod ipsas singulas humanas animas singulis stellis 
quasi curribus superposuisset ut ibi cum ipsis circumferrentur et omnem 
uirtutem atque perfectionem ibi discerent. Dicunt etiam quasi duas 


42 Of. Silk, “Pseudo-Johannes,” 35, 
® Fecle. 1, 6. 


FOUR COMMENTARIES ON THE «DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE» 315 


portas esse in celo, scilicet cancrum et capricornum, per quarum alteram, 
scilicet per cancrum, cum incorporari debent descendunt: primum ad- 
tingendo leonem deinde per singulos circulos planetarum descendendo, 
paulatim puritatem suam deponunt et quandam idoneitatem conmis- 
céndo terreno corpori recipiuntur quo usque tantum in ipsum descen- 
dant totius iam oblite perfectionis. 


49 Si autem hoc terreno carcere doctrine se dederunt et ardentes in 
sui amore Creatoris semper fuerint ab hoc carcere resolute per eosdem 
circulos planetarum ascendentes et paulatim perfectionem prius de- 
positam recipientes per carpicornum tandem ad conparem stellam re- 
deunt. Si uero hic posite terrenis inhiant nec Creatorem intente respi- 
ciunt resolute non illuc redeunt sed secundum rei ueritatem ad inferna 
descendunt. Secundum uero philosophos in inferiora corpora mutantur. 


50 Que omnia in libro ordine tanguntur cum dicit: Tu PaRiBus CaUusis. 
Causas pares uocat reliquias predictas. Leues currus uocat stellas. 
CELuM uocat circulos planetarum in quos prius descendunt. Benignam 
legem dicit quod ad priorem perfectionem redeunt. Reducem ignem 
uocat seruationem diuinorum preceptorum. 


51 Da PATER. 


Huc tota series predicta intendit. SEDEM AUGUSTAM et FORTEM BONI 
uocat deum. Conspicuos visus etiam rationem dicit et intellectum. 
NEBULAS ET PONDERA TERRENE MOLIS uocat terrenas curas que mentem 
cecant et aggrauant. CERNERE deum est FINIS quia qui per ipsum cernit 
nil ultra eum querit. Et est deus principium ueniendi ad se occulta cor- 
dis inspiratione: vECcToR ministrando uirtutes, Dux exemplum minis- 
trando: Semrra precepta per que tendamus largiendo. TERMINUS IDEM 
quia est primum se petentibus. 


52 Vel” aliter: Tu causis ANIMAS PARIBUS. Ordo uerborum est: Tu 
PROUEHIS ANIMAS UITASQUE MINORES PARIBUS CAUSIS ET SERIS IN CELUM 
ET TERRAM APTANS SUBLIMES CURRIBUS LEUIBUS. Diuersi diuerso modo 
in hoc sentiunt. Quidam intelligunt ita ut animas dicat angelicos 5ρ1- 
ritus, UITAS uero minores homines quo PARIBUS CAUSIS produxit dum eos 
rationabiles condidit. Seritque inmittit angelos In ceLUM, homines IN 
TERRAM, APTANS SUBLIMES ANIMAS LEUIORIBUS CURRIBUS i.e. subtili con- 
templationi ad consideranda celestia. 


53 Alii anrmas doctos intelligunt et sapientes, UITAS uero MINORES stul- 


44 Stewart, “A Commentary,” 34-35; Silvestre, “Le commentaire,” 64; Courcelle, La Con- 
solation, 291. 


316 N. M. HARING 


tos ut serat IN CELUM sapientes, in TERRAM stultos, et sublimes animas 
Sapientium LEUIORIBUS CURRIBUS aptet ie. subtili intellectui. At tantum 
prudentioribus aliter uidetur quia anmas rationabiles hominum spiri- 
tus intelligunt, urras uero MINORES pecudum animas. Due** enim sunt 
anime: una rationalis que est hominum et. uitalis que est animalium. 
Vnde quia tantum ad usum uite animam habent Grece zoa dicuntur. 
Zoe enim (f. 39v) Grece, Latine dicitur uita. 


54 Hinc** quidam uolunt zodiacum circulum signiferum dici quod 
animalia habeat leonem thaurum etc. ProvEHT ergo deus ANIMAS et 
UITAS PARIBUS CAUSIS i.e. equali potentia. Et hominem ad imaginem 
et similitudinem suam condidit et animalibus uitalem tribuit animam., 
Has ergo sSUBLIMES ANIMAS rationabilitate aptat LEUIORIBUS CURRIBUS 
i.e. subtili contemplationi et intelligentie. Eosque serit In CELUM i.e. ad 
celestem instituit conuersationem. ΨΊΤΑΒ uero MINORES serit IN TERRAM 
quia animalia tantum terris sunt dedita et, cum mortuntur corpore, 
moriuntur et anima. 


Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 


45 Cf. Courcelle, La Consolation, 250. 
48 Cf. Courcelle, La Consolation, 250. 


Patientia in the B-Text of “Piers Plowman” 


ELISABETH M. ORSTEN 


1D ae the past few decades, an ever-increasing number of scholars 
have tried to discover the spiritual meaning of Langland’s Piers 
Plowman. Whatever their interpretation, all recognised that caritas plays 
a central role in the poem, and concentrated very largely on this parti- 
cular virtue. Hence so far, relatively little work has been done on fatientia, 
a curious omission when one considers what importance Langland himself 
attached to it. Most frequently, this virtue has been discussed only in 
relation to the allegorical figure who appears in the vita de DoWel+ Though 
Will the dreamer, with his initial arrogance and impatience, provides for 
a wider study of patientia, every analysis of Will’s development has been 
considered primarily as a growth in caritas. Only Morton W. Bloomfield, 
who argues that Piers Plowman is concerned with perfection rather than 
with salvation, suggests in his conclusion that patientia is a fundamental 
issue in each of the three lives, essential to the poem as a whole, and rele- 
vant to his own theme of perfection.2 Unfortunately, Prof. Bloomfield’s 
summary is all too brief, and he yokes together patience, humility and 
moderation, as if they were one and the same virtue. The present paper 
therefore, seeks to throw more light on the role that patientia plays in Piers 
Plowman. Not only is this subject of interest in itself, but it will also further 
understanding of the structural unity that underlies Langland’s complex 
poem. 


1 Although not specifically intended for a scholarly audience, the best discussion of the figure 
of Patience is to be found in J. F. Goodridge’s translation entitled Piers The Ploughman, Penguin 
Books, 1959. Besides an admirable introduction to the poem as a whole, Goodridge deals with 
“The Riddle of Patience” in his Appendix C. The most recent treatment of Patience, concerned 
only with Patience’s teaching on charity, is to be found in Ben H. Smith, Traditional Imagery of 
Charity in “Piers Plowman” (The Hague, 1966), 41-55. 

2 “Yn Do-wel patient poverty is the most desirable virtue, and in Do-bet, in the passion and 
Harrowing of Hell part, patience was united with majesty and power in Christ, and now in Do- 
best temperance in the broadest sense of the word, is offered as the root of all virtue, of an ordered 
society, and of an ordered universe. Patience or humility is the first step towards perfection.” 
Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth Century Apocalypse (New Jersey, 1961), 140. 


318 E. M. ORSTEN 


There are three obvious reasons why patientia should receive so much 
attention throughout Piers Plowman. Firstly, Langland is prophet and 
reformer as well as poet, and prophets have ever needed to possess their 
souls in patience when seeing the world around them rush blindly to its 
own destruction. Secondly, Will the dreamer, who connects the two parts 
of the poem and is particularly important in the vitae of the second part, 
only gains knowledge and understanding as he progresses in humility and 
patience. Thirdly, throughout Piers Plowman, Langland is deeply con- 
cerned with the poor. Obviously, these will find their hard lot more bear- 
able, if they endure it with a measure of patient resignation. But a far 
more fundamental question arises here. The misery of the poor on earth 
does not automatically guarantee them compensation in the after-life. 
They too must work for their salvation. Following Patristic teaching, 
Langland repeatedly reminds the poor that the specific demand their 
state makes on them is to be patient ina positive, Christian sense. Moreover, 
he calls on them to seek spiritual perfection through the fullest exercise 
of this virtue. 

With all this emphasis on patience, does Langland contribute anything 
new to our understanding of it? Certainly not in the realm of theological 
speculation. A great deal, however, in that area of human understanding 
where hearts and minds are stirred by living example. Therefore, after 
considering briefly what orthodox Christian teaching underlies Langland’s 
thinking, the present paper will concentrate on Will’s dream-visions, 
through which he gains understanding and grows in patience. 

Patience, when understood in specifically Christian terms, is not a stoic 
virtue. It is neither negative nor passive. Its ultimate goal is God; and it 
is prepared to persevere towards this end, encouraged by the example of 
Christ on earth, and the fortitude of the early Christian martyrs. Innume- 
rable Scriptural injunctions commend the practice of patience, and St. 
Paul lists it among the fruits of the Spirit, in close proximity to charity, 
joy and peace. “Fructus autem spiritus est caritas, gaudium, pax, patien- 
tia...” (Gal. V: 22). Augustine’s commonly accepted definition states 
that human patience can only then be called a virtue when, by its means 
“qua aequo animo mala toleramus, ne animo iniquo bona deseramus, per 
quae ad meliora perveniamus.”* Gregory the Great reminds us that no 
one ever reached heaven without patience, “nemo sanctorum ad coeles- 
tem gloriam nisi patientiam servando pervenit™ and calls patience the 
root and guardian of all the other virtues: 


De Patientia, Cap. 11, 2; PL 40, 611. 
Homiliarum in Ezechielem, Lib. 1, Homilia VII, 12; PL 76, 846, 


Bm & 


“PATIENTIA” IN THE B-TEXT OF “PIERS PLOWMAN” 319 


Ait ergo martyribus suis:... In patientia vestra possidebitis animas vestras. 
Idcirco possessio animae in virtute patientiae ponitur, quia radix omnium 
custosque virtutum patientia est. Per patientiam vero possidemus animas 
nostras.6 


In the famous “ladder of humility” which the Rule of St. Benedict esta- 
blishes, patience is placed on the fourth rung and described in considerable 
detail. Again, the stress falls on positive elements. Patience is to be em- 
braced with gladness — the Latin verb “amplecto” implies this — and the 
monk is encouraged to persevere by the reminder that this will lead him 
finally to eternal life: 
Quartus humilitatis gradus est, si in ipsa obedientia duris et contrariis 
rebus, vel etiam quibuslibet irrogatis injuriis, tacita conscientia patientiam 


amplectatur, et sustinens non lassescat, vel discedat, dicente Scriptura: 
Qui perseveraverit usque in finem, hic salvus erit.® 


Langland is obviously familiar with all these ideas, and very probably 
with the actual quotations which I have cited. Though seldom expressed 
explicitly, they form part of his whole climate of thought. Insofar as he 
deals with patience in any abstract, systematic fashion, he appears to be 
— directly or indirectly — most influenced by Augustine. This is notice- 
able, for instance, in the place which he assigns to this virtue. Drawing 
on earlier tradition, Augustine had distinguished between the four cardinal 
virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, and had described 
patience as one of the component parts of fortitude: 


Fortitudo est considerata periculorum susceptio et laborum perpessio. 
Ejus partes, magnificentia, fidentia, patientia, perseverantia.” 


Langland uses this same classification. In Passus XIX, after Christ has 
established his Church and taught her DoBest, Grace instructs Piers to 
sow four seeds. These represent the cardinal virtues. The third seed is 
fortitude and enables him who eats of it to endure all things patiently 
(XIX, 284-90) : 


The thridde seed pat Pieres sewe was spiritus fortitudinis. 

And who so eet of pat seed hardy was eure. 

To suffre al bat god sent sykenesse & angres; 

My3te no lesynge ne lyere _ ne losse of worldely catel 

Maken hym for any mournynge pat he nas merye in soule, 
And bolde & abydynge bismere to suffre 

And playeth al with pacyence & parce michi, domine. 


5 Homiliarum in Evangelia, Lib. 11, Homilia XXXYV, 4; PL 76, 1261. 
ὃ Regula Monachorum, VII; PL 66, 373, B. 
7 De Diversis Quaestionibus, Quaestic XXXI, 1; PL 40, 21. 


320 E. M. ORSTEN 


By the late Middle Ages, such classification is common, of course, and 
Langland’s contemporaries, writing in the vernacular, also speak of the 
four cardinal virtues, though not necessarily considering so carefully their 
components parts. Dan Michel, for example, the author of the Ayendite 
of Inwit, mentions patience specifically in a section concerned with “pe 
to-delinge of uirtues”, or what seven qualities the Christian needs to do 
battle against the world. Under this scheme, he describes patience as “pe 
uerpe stape of Prouesse”.® Since the Ayenbite is a manual which provides 
systematic analysis of Christian doctrine for the laity, Dan Michel has 
already dealt with the four cardinal virtues in an earlier section. There 
he never explicitly classifies patience under fortitudo. Nevertheless, the 
detailed description of this virtue, which Dan Michel calls “strengpe”, 
suggests that patience also has its place there.® 

Possibly then, Langland’s method of classification merely follows an 
established pattern. A much more direct Augustinian influence seems 
discernable in what he has to say about grace and about its relation to 
virtue. Flowing from his anti-Pelagian controversies, Augustine had con- 
tinually stressed man’s dependence on grace, which he sees as the free gift 
of God, the “donum Spiritus Sancti”.1° This notion, implicit throughout 
Piers Plowman, is twice stated explicitly by the figure of Imagynatif, when 
he appears to warn the dreamer against intellectual pride (XII, 62-65) : 

Ac grace ne groweth nouzte but amonges lowe; 
Pacience and pouerte pe place is bere it groweth, 


And in lele lyuynge men and in lyf holy, 
And pborugh be gyfte of be holygoste... 


Human knowledge and understanding can be accounted for, Imagynatif 
explains. Not so grace. Ultimately, no man knows how and why it appears, 
but only that it is “a gyft of god/and of gret loue spryngeth” (XII, 70). 
Later, when in Passus XIX the cardinal virtues are being planted in the 
field, Grace supplies the seed (XIX, 269-70): 


And grace gaue greynes pe cardynales vertues, 
And sewe [hem] in mannes soule... 


This image suggests that the exercise of virtue itself depends on God’s 


8 Dan Michel, The Ayenbite of Inwit, Richard Morris, ed. (London, 1866), Early English Text 
Society, OS 23, 167. 

® “be uirtue of strengbe/ hep alsuo pri offices. Vor huo pet pise uirtue hep: he him a-rerep 
an he3 a-boue be perils bet byeb ine be wordle. No bing him ne dret/ bote vileynie. Aduerseté/ 
and prosperité/ he berb/ and boleh wyb-oute wepinge. ne ariZthalf ne alefthalf.” loc. cit., 125. 

410 De Spiritu et Littera, Cap. WI, 5; PL 44, 203. 


“PATIENTIA” IN THE B-TEXT OF “PIERS PLOWMAN” 39] 


initiative, rather than on man’s. Here too, Langland follows Augustine 
who had chided the Stoic for pride in his own perfection: 

Est virtus animi res laudabilis... sed dic, Unde habes ? Non virtus animi 
tui te facit beatum, sed qui tibi virtutem dedit, qui tibi velle inspiravit, et 
posse donavit.t 

Augustine’s treatise on patience applies this general principle specifically 
to patience with the statement that “Patientia non venit ex liberi arbitrii 
viribus, sed ex divino adjutorio”.™ 

These preliminary remarks must conclude with the assertion that Piers 
Plowman is not a theological treatise, not even an unsystematic one. It 
handles images and ideas of Patristic writers almost casually and uncon- 
sciously, and such usage suggests considerable familiarity. Hence Lang- 
land’s theological indebtedness should never be ignored. However, in 
itself, the exploration of this area contributes little to any fundamental 
understanding of his work. Piers Plowman is essentially a poem, and what 
matters within the framework of the poem is that Langland gives life to 
abstract ideas by placing them in a context that involves activity. Thus, 
for example, in the instance just quoted, we see grace in concrete terms of 
ploughman, field and seed. The imagery of organic growth which appears 
here, runs like a leitmotif throughout Piers Plowman, from the field of folk 
that becomes Piers’ half-acre, to the barn of unity in which all are to be 
finally gathered. In passing, one might note that not every detail is 
carefully allegorised and that the allegory itself shifts. Hence, somewhere 
there remains the reality of an English field. Yet even when the imagery is 
not so clearly linked to the main theme, it is still characterised by Lang- 
land’s stress on activity. Sin does harm, virtue does good, and we see each 
primarily in the doing. The fact that both come equally to life is in it- 
self a remarkable feat, since wickedness appears to lend itself to much easier 
dramatic portrayal than goodness. Yet next to Piers himself, no character 
exercises greater appeal than the personification of patience in Passus XIII 
and XIV. Since whatever Langland has to say about this virtue is most 
clearly exemplified here, our study should begin with this attractive figure. 


I 


Patience only appears on the scene in person, after the dreamer has 
learnt to recognise his own need for this virtue. From the very beginning, 
various characters have pointed to his deficiencies, but Will has paid scant 
heed. Then, in Passus XI, after a long discourse from Loyalty, he con- 


11 Sermo CL, Cap. VIII, 9; PL 38, 812. 
12 De Patientia, Cep. XV, 12; PL 40, 617. 


322 E. M. ORSTEN 


templates the world about him and expresses dissatisfaction with its basic 
arrangements. Thereupon Reason appears and tries to teach him to 
recognise and accept the inscrutability of God’s will. Despite his argumen- 
tativeness, the dreamer finally grows ashamed of himself, and at that mo- 
ment he awakens. Immediately, he falls into another sleep-vision, in which 
he learns that his own impatience had cut short the previous dream and 
deprived him of further instruction from Reason. Ruefully, he admits that 
this lesson has brought him a step nearer his quest, for now at least he 
knows that the first of the three lives demands patience (XI, 402): 


“To se moche and suffre more _certes,” quod I, “is dowel !” 


His momentary insight leads him to an intermediary vision, which is 
followed by a period of wandering “many a 3ere after” (XIII, 3), musing 
on what he has seen. Only after this long preparation can he sit down at 
the banquet with Patience. 

In this dream-vision, which occurs in Passus XIII, Conscience invites 
Will to dine with Clergy. On their way, they see Patience waiting outside 
in pilgrim’s attire, begging food in the name of charity “for a pore here- 
myte” (XIII, 30). He is invited inside, but seated below the salt, at a 
lesser table, next to Will. The meal tends to be somewhat allegorical, and 
at Patience’s board includes a great many dishes of scriptural quotations 
related to penitence. Once again, however, the allegory is not perfectly 
sustained, and so at the same time we enjoy a real banquet at which the 
doctor of divinity, flushed with wine, stuffs himself with 


... sondry metes mortrewes and puddynges, 
Wombe-cloutes and wylde braune & egges yfrved with grece 


(XIII, 62-63), until Will angrily wishes (XIII, 81-82) : 


pat disshes a[nd] dobleres ὈΠῸΣ pis ilke doctour 
Were [molten] led in his maw. 


Patience, sitting beside Will, is content with his meagre portion and “made 
hym muirth with his mete” (XIIT, 60). Yet such ready acceptance of his 
own lot does not blind him to the doctor’s obvious faults. Will, of course, 
only sees these in terms of the unfair treatment which he himself has 
received and bitterly resents. Patience, on the other hand, can look at the 
doctor objectively, and laughs at the discrepancy between his words and 
his works (XIII, 86-87, 89-92): 

«ὦ. “bow shal se bus sone whan he may no more, 

He shal have a penaunce in his paunche and puffe at eche a worde... 

For now he hath dronken so depe he wil deuyne sone, 

And preuen it by her pocalips and passioun of seynt Auereys, 


pat neither bacoun ne braune _blan[c]mangere ne mortrewee 
Is noither fisshe [ne] flesshe but fode for a penaunte. 


“DATIENTIA” IN THE B-TEXT OF “PIERS PLOWMAN” 393 


True to expectation, the doctor is readily drawn out, but Will attacks 
him so heatedly that Conscience begs Patience to quiet him. The dis- 
cussion then resumes, and Patience is asked for his definition of the three 
lives. He states his opinions modestly but with self-assurance, and claims 
to have gained his knowledge from “ἃ lemman pat I loued / loue was 
hir name” (XIII, 139). Furthermore, he admits to carrying DoWell 
on his own person. Though the doctor of divinity questions the veracity 
of Patience’s words, Conscience is so moved by them that he suddenly 
decides to accompany Patience. Deliberately, he rejects the book-learning 
and wealth proffered him by his erst-while friend, Clergy, but mollifies 
the angry doctor when he points out that all earthly troubles could be 
solved “If pacience be owre partyng felawe / and pryue with vs bothe” 
(XIII, 206). Consequently, their leave-taking is cordial, and the doctor 
promises the support of learning to the cause of truth, while Conscience 
goes on pilgrimage “tyl pacience haue preued pe / and parfite maked” 
(XIII, 214). The dreamer, who has ceased to be a participant in the 
action, watches as the two companions set out, carrying “Sobrete, and 
symple speche / and sothfaste byleue” (XIII, 217) in Patience’s pack for 
the journey. According to Langland’s magnificent and succinct phrase, 
these will sustain the travellers, if they pass through” ... vnkyndenesse and 
coueytise ... hungrye contrees bothe” (XITI, 219). 

In this brief outline of some hundred closely packed lines, a great many 
aspects of patience, applicable equally to the person and to the virtue, 
are revealed. Patience is cheerful and humble, but never obsequious. 
Though he accepts a lowly position with complete lack of self-regard, 
he can poke gentle fun at his social betters and does not gloss over human 
failings. His words, no less than his person, carry authority. In fact, 
only he can control the impetuous Will. Brief acquaintance with Patience 
suffices to persuade Conscience to join him in his hard journey and even 
moves the self-important doctor of divinity. A little later, he will have a 
similarly powerful effect on Haukyn, the active man. Patience is closely 
associated with poverty for reasons which will become obvious when we 
consider what Langland has to say about the poor. In the present context, 
his impecunious state befits his profession of pilgrim. Unlike Will, who is 
also journeying, Patience seems to know where he is going, and is well 
acquainted with the three lives. In his own definition of them, he picks 
up the all-important reference to caritas, made earlier by Clergy (XIII, 124), 
and identifies it with the life of DoBest. Modestly, he himself claims to 
possess only the first of the three lives (XIII, 152). Yet he offers the 
bundle containing DoWell with the assurance that nothing else is needful, 
citing “caritas nichil timet” to support his claim (XIII, 157-63*). This 
quotation could suggest that Patience has actually reached DoBest. A 


324 E. M. ORSTEN 


more likely explanation seems to be thatcaritas is already present in DoWell, 
as indeed it ought to be, if the three lives are inextricably bound up with 
one another. Obviously, Patience possesses what is essential to all three 
lives, regardless of which particular one he claims to be living. Even within 
the terms of his own definition, he goes beyond the limits of DoW. ell, since 
he embraces DoBet in his function of teacher, and manifests DoBest by his 
obvious familiarity with caritas, whose lover he has professed himself to be. 
His definitions are not the fruit of learning, but spring from personal 
experience. Close fellowship with him will lead a man to perfection. 


Tit 


The second half of Passus XIII and all of Passus XIV are concerned 
with Haukyn, the wafer-seller, and with his soiled “cote of crystendome” 
(XI, 274). In Passus XIII, his sinfulness is exposed; in Passus XIV, the 
remedies are propounded. The first suggestion that Haukyn should mend 
his ways comes from Conscience, but when Haukyn protests the difficulties, 
Patience takes him in hand and proceeds to instruct him at great length. 
He begins by suggesting a life of moderation, bringing forth from his sack 
“vitailles of grete vertues” (XIV, 37) to sustain the reluctant penitent. 
Will, watching the scene, notes that the food being offered to Haukyn is 
“fiat voluntas tua”, that clause of the Paternoster in which the suppliant 
attempts to accept patiently whatever Providence might send (XIV, 48). 
Patience presents it with the guarantee that whoever has this food can bear 
any affliction, and adds “Pacientes vincunt”, the same phrase with which, 
in the previous passus, he had summarised his definition of the three lives 
(XIII, 1715). But his words have no immediate effect on Haukyn. He 
ignores Patience’s advice concerning confession and contrition.— we recall 
at this point the penitential food at the banquet — and asks instead where 
charity is to be found. 


“bere parfit treuthe and pouere herte is and pacience of tonge, 
bere is charitee, be chief chaumbrere for god hymselue !” 


Patience replies (XIV, 99-100). This leads Haukyn to enquire about 
“paciente pouerte” (XIV, 101), a subject on which Patience waxes elo- 


13 Clergy, whose theory is better than his practice, rightly suggests that the three lives fit 
together. He explains that according to Pier’s teaching (XIII, 27-29): 
“... dowel and dobet aren two infinites, 
Whiche infinites, with a feith fynden oute dobest, 
Which shal saue mannes soule.” 


“DATIENTIA” IN THE B-TEXT OF “PIERS PLOWMAN” 395 


quent for over two hundred lines. His words finally bear fruit, for Haukyn 
repents and (XIV, 326-28): 
Swowed and sobbed and syked ful ofte 


pat euere he hadde londe or lordeship _lasse other more, 
Or maystrye ouer any man mo ban of hym-self. 


Belatedly, Haukyn realises that love of worldly possessions has misled him 
into sin and weeps so boisterously, that he awakens the dreamer. The be- 
ginning of Passus XV describes how Will then meditates on all he has seen, 
and is so absorbed in these thoughts, that everyone considers him mad. 

Patience’s instruction on poverty is noteworthy because it contains one 
of Langland’s most moving poetic passages — the one in which he gives 
an eloquent account of what the poor endure all year long, especially in 
winter-time, and which concludes with a moving plea on their behalf, cal- 
ling for human and divine compassion (XIV, 157-80). Furthermore, Pa- 
tience’s discourse contains a defence of voluntary poverty, undertaken for 
love of God. This seems to be the state Haukyn finally intends to embrace, 
rather than the life of moderation, first suggested to him by Patience. In 
Haukyn’s case, such a choice seems desirable, since he needs to repent of 
all his excesses, and appears unable to exercise due restraint in the use of 
worldly goods. For the majority of mankind, however, poverty does not 
come about through free choice, but is an unavoidable economic condition. 
Langland envisages an audience primarily composed of people who are in 
this latter state, and identifies himself with them. The questions raised 
on their behalf recur throughout Piers Plowman. The answers, basically 
always the same, gain in force partly through sheer repetition, but largely 
because each new setting adds a further dimension. Thus, Patience’s 
contribution is enhanced by his own personality and by his persuasive 
effect on the various characters in that particular dramatic situation. His 
teaching, however, largely repeats what Loyalty had already said in an 
earlier passus.4 Therefore, we must turn now from any specific setting to 
summarise the general reasons why Langland considers the virtue’ of 
patience so necessary to the poor. 

Christianity commends the practice of voluntary poverty, but does not 
regard this way of life as essential to spiritual perfection. Neither does 


14 Patience’s words are addressed not only to Haukyn, but to all mankind. For Haukyn plays 
a double role. As a character in his own right, he is the sinful wafer-seller who eventually reling- 
uishes worldly goods in toto. As the allegorical figure of activa vita, he represents. all men who 
are engaged in worldly commerce and. must learn the proper use of temporalia. Hence the long 
confession of every possible kind of sin, so inappropriate to one single person. Once again, we 
have an allegory in which the various levels do not completely overlap. 


326 E. M. ORSTEN 


Langland. Primarily, he is concerned about the right use of temporalia, 
be the amount great or small. Repeatedly, he recommends a life of mode- 
ration, arguing that every man is entitled to a just reward for his labour 
and to a fair consideration of his actual needs. While presenting us with 
this ideal, healso recognises that many people eke out a miserable existence, 
on the one hand exposed to fraudulent merchants, conniving lawyers and 
ever-rising food prices, and on the other, only too ready themselves to ad- 
vance by cheating their neighbour. Though Langland cares as much about 
their economic state as he does about their spiritual welfare, only the 
second question concerns us here. It occupies a prominent place in the 
poem. For while Piers Plowman deals with the problem of salvation as it 
pertains to every man, the poor are particularly singled out for attention. 
Not only does Langland sympathise with them, but he also identifies him- 
self with them through his persona of dreamer. Will belongs among the 
lowly. True, his rebellious attitude to authority springs more from his 
intellectual questionings than from his poverty. Yet at the same time, 
he speaks very much for the poor, and voices what they feel but are unable 
to express. As we already know, he lacks patience. The painful progress 
which he makes, serves as example and encouragement to others. Further- 
more, throughout the poem, Langland frequently addresses the poor direct- 
ly, and urges them to be patient. Placing himself on their level has given 
him this right. 

The bitterness of poverty, Langland claims, can only be made sweet 
through the exercise of patience. Here is how Loyalty explains this matter 
to the dreamer (XI, 251-54): 

As on a walnot with-oute is a bitter barke 
And after bat bitter barke (be be shelle aweye), 


Is a kirnelle of conforte kynde to restore; 
So is, after, pouerte or penaunce _pacientlyche ytake. 


Patient resignation enables the poor to endure their hard lot without giving 
in to despair and stifles any temptation to seek relief through dishonest 
means. Above all, when such patient resignation becomes transformed into 
patient and positive acceptance, then a burdensome economic condition 
suddenly becomes the road to sanctity. Here we reach the heart of the 


15 Will’s biography is only given to us in casual snatches, usually while he is “awake”. Within 
the dream-framework, he argues about poverty in a theoretical fashion that precludes any ex- 
plicitly personal note. Only in one instance does Will identify himself so directly with the poor 
that we seem to hear the voice of Langland himself. This occurs at the banquet scene, when Will 
accuses the gluttonous doctor of lacking charity, and cries out that he “Hath no pyte on vs pore” 
(XIII, 78). 


“PATIENTIA” IN THE B-TEXT OF “PIERS PLOWMAN” 327 


matter, for the conviction that ultimately, every man is called to perfection, 
underlies the dreamer’s whole search after the three lives. Clearly, one 
must start where one finds oneself. Therefore, in their respective discourses, 
both Loyalty and Patience put forward a host of arguments in favour of 
poverty. Some of this reasoning is purely pragmatic, as for example Loyal- 
ty’s point that the poor are less burdened with responsibilities and can 
sleep more soundly at night (XI, 258-60). This attempt to make a virtue 
out of necessity suggests that Langland expects to find all kinds of people 
among his audience, including some who are not yet motivated by any 
spiritual aims. While appealing to them in terms they can accept, he points 
already to what lies ahead. Presumably this is a well-established approach, 
for John of Bromyard’s lengthy exposition on poverty refers the indigent 
to the scriptural examples set by Job and Tobias, with the same end in 
view: 

Primum exemplo ostenditur Iob et Tobias, & multorum aliorum; qui ne- 


cessitate in paupertatem cediderunt: et tamen ex patientia, quae necessita- 
tem sequebatur, de necessitate uirtutem fecerunt.1® 


Presumably Langland knew this argument, either directly from Bromyard’s 
encyclopaedic reference work for the mediaeval preacher, or via contem- 
porary sermons which relied on such handbooks and used a similar approach. 
When reminding his audience of Job and Tobias, Bromyard ignores the 
fact that eventually both reaped an earthly reward for their meek accep- 
tance of adversities. For such expectation is not really part of the Christian 
ethos. The only promised reward is an eternal one. Consequently, Lang- 
land fears that if the poor do not accept patiently their present misery, then 
all their sufferings will prove vain, and they will lose the joys of heaven as 
well as the benefits of earth. The anonymous writer of the Liber De Duo- 
decim Abusionum Gradibus comments on this fact when inveighing against 
lack of humility among the poor: 
Cavendum ergo pauperibus est, ne dum per egestatem et necessitatem 


terrenum regnum perdunt, per mentis etiam imprudentiam coelorum regna 
amittant.2” 


Quite possibly this warning is aimed primarily at those who have given up 
the world and pride themselves on their renunciation, but it can apply 
equally well to the more mundane self-seeking found among Langland’s 
drunken beggars and idle labourers. A great many of the failings confessed 


16 Summa Praedicantium (Nuremberg, 1485), P. III, “Paupertas”, Cap. III, Art. 7. 

17 Liber De Duodecim Abusionum Gradibus, Gradus VIII; PL 40, 1084-85. During the Middle 
Ages, this work was attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, and hence stamped with the seal of his 
authority. 


328 E. M. ORSTEN 


by the Seven Deadly Sins and found spotting Haukyn’s coat are clearly 
the sins of the less fortunate, for despite all his sympathy for them, Lang- 
land never idealises the poor. Though encouraging them to realise that 
their state enjoys special divine approbation, he never praises poverty with- 
out a reminder that only patience raises it to these spiritual heights. The 
two words occur in frequent conjunction throughout Piers Plowman. Thus 
for example, after arguing that all Christians are blood brethren and there- 
fore equal, Loyalty opts for poverty and points out that (XI, 247-48): 

And alle be wyse bat euere were by augte I can aspye, 

Preysen pouerte for best lyf if pacience it folwe. 
Similarly, Patience reminds Haukyn that since Christ lived on earth in the 
likeness of a poor man, the patient poor have a special claim on him (XIV, 
259-60) : . 

.. al pore bat pacience is may claymen and asken 

After her endynge here _heuene-riche blisse. 
The next question Haukyn asks shows that he is beginning to understand 
this essential link. Since you praise poverty so greatly, he replies, tell me 
now “What is Pouerte with pacience ... properly to mene ?” (XIV, 274). 
Thereupon Patience draws up a systematic list ofall the benefits that flow 
from being unencumbered by riches, and concludes with the assertion 
that patience is the sustenance, the very bread of poverty (XIV, 313-14): 

For pacyence is payn for pouerte hym-selue 

And sobrete swete drynke and good leche in sykenesse. 

All this throws a slightly different light on Langland, the poet who is 
noted for his social conscience, True, he is deeply disturbed by the misery 
of his fellow men, and on their behalf addresses many impassioned pleas 
to the wealthy. True, he seems to know through personal experience just 
how hard poverty can be. But he never holds out any hope to the needy 
that they might improve their material condition and is only concerned 
with spiritualising it. Whenever he addresses himself directly to the poor, 
he calls on them to exercise patience; when dealing with the rich, he re- 
minds them of their duty of alms-giving. The attitude of mind this suggests 
is most clearly expressed in a sermon attributed to Augustine. Here, the 
two activities are characterised as proper to the two different states and of 
equal merit in the sight of God: 

Potuit enim Deus omnes homines divites facere; sed nobis per pauperum 


miseriam voluit subvenire: ut et pauper per patientiam, et dives per elee- 
mosynam possint Dei gratiam promereri.?® 


18 Sermo CCOV, 2; PL 39, 2330-31. 


“pATIENTIA” IN THE B-TEXT OF “PIERS PLOWMAN” 399 


The argument that the poor exist for the sake of the rich sounds strange to 
modern ears, and I quote the passage mainly to illustrate the importance 
attached to patience. Not only is this virtue particularly linked with the 
state of poverty, but it gains weight through being equated with alms-giving, 
an activity which the Middle Ages held in unusually high esteem and came 
close to regarding as a universal panacea. 

The patience which Langland recommends to the poor, however, must 
not be confused with that submissiveness which Victorian hymns enjoin on 
the less fortunate. In Piers Plowman, patientia is an active force, both on the 
human and on the divine level. When Will complains about disorder in 
the universe, the only answer Reason gives him is that God the Creator 
deliberately exercises patience. Will, Reason suggests, should learn from 
that model (XI, 370-73): 

“Suffraunce is a souereygne vertue and a swyfte veniaunce. 
Who suffreth more ban god? ... no gome, as I leue! 


He mizte amende in a Minute while al pat mys standeth, 
Ac he suffreth for somme mannes good and so is owre bettre.” 


Similarly, throughout Piers Plowman, Christ never appears as passive vic- 
tim, but always as conquering hero, who freely chooses his course. This 
portrayal explains why at the end of the poem, Langland describes his 
whole earthly life as a deliberate exercise in patience, and sums it up in 
the one phrase “willen & suffren” (XIX, 64). The same positive choice is 
open to men. We see this in Passus XIII, when Conscience sets out on 
his journey with Patience, and explains that “be wille of be wye / and the 
wille [of] folke here” (XIII, 190) have stirred his own will. Conscience’s 
decision is deliberate — the word “will” occurs repeatedly in his brief 
apologia — and indicates that to recognise and fulfill one’s vocation as 
pilgrim on this earth involves more than passive acceptance. The same is 
true of the patience Langland demands from the poor. 


IV 


To conclude this study, we must turn now to another pilgrim, namely 
to Will, the dreamer. Since his journey occupies the whole of Piers Plow- 
man, Langland can show how a very real personal development takes place 
in him. In fact, whatever clear progression can be found in the poem, is 
associated with Will’s understanding and increased willingness to learn, 
and the dream-visions which flow from this process. When we consider his 
reactions to each new situation, we will find that slowly, but genuinely, 
he grows in patience. Furthermore, this growth seems to follow the classic 
pattern described by ascetic theology. 


330 E. M. ORSTEN 


Professor Vansteenberghe, who briefly summarises the three-fold develop- 
ment of the virtue of patience, connects it with the three stages of the spi- 
ritual life: 

La patience peut, en effet, étre pénétrée soit de résignation, soit de volonté 
positive, soit d’amour. De 1a trois degrés qui correspondent, en somme, 
avec trois voies de la vie spirituelle. 

Au premier degré, l’Ame se soumet, elle accepte sans murmure le calice 
qu’elle voudrait cependant voir s’éloigner d’elle. Au second, elle fait sienne 
la volonté divine et veut réellement l’épreuve qui la fait souffrir. Au troi- 
siéme, elle s’attache avec joie ἃ la volonté de Dieu, elle ’aime et se porte 
en quelque sorte au devant d’elle, soutenue par un ardent désir.19 


While this three-fold framework does not really apply to any of the ab- 
stract definitions of Langland’s vitae, the dreamer’s personal development 
largely corresponds to the suggested pattern. When we first meet him, 
in the visto, he is masquerading as a false hermit, curious about spiritual 
matters but detached from any direct involvement or effort. Once he has 
embarked upon his search in the vitae, he asks for advice, but lacks the 
humility to accept what he is offered. Contemptuously, he dismisses the 
teaching of the friars whom he encounters in Passus VIII, and frankly 
admits that he enjoys “iangling” for its own sake (VIII, 118-20): 
I dorste meue no matere to make hym to iangle 


But as I bad bouzt bo be mene bitwene, 
And put forth somme purpos_ ἴο prouen his wittes. 


Only in Passus XI, when Reason has reproved him for questioning God’s 
ways, does he begin to understand what patience means, and says sadly 
that this experience has taught him that Dowel is “To se moche and suffre 
more” (XI, 402). This statement, an improvement on his previous argu- 
mentativeness, occurs in the middle of the vita de DoWell and suggest a 
modicum of resignation, albeit no great enthusiasm. It suffices, however, 
to prepare Will for the actual meeting with Patience, a scene which we 
have already considered in some detail. 

The new way of life which Conscience and Haukyn embrace with such 
readiness in Passus XIII and XIV might well be described as the second 
degree in the practice of the virtue of patience. Will appears to be only 
a passive witness of their conversion, but in Passus XV, which begins the 
vita de DoBet, he shows that he has personally profited from this lesson. 
To begin with, he meditates at great length on all he has just seen. Then, 
when he falls asleep again and meets Anima in his next dream-vision, he 
asks where he may find true charity. Anima offers him a description, 


19 Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, X1, 2250. 


“PATIENTIA” IN THE B-TEXT OF “PIERS PLOWMAN” 331 


couched largely in terms of humility and patience, and notes that charity 
is sustained by exactly that same “fiat-voluntas-tua” which Patience had 
previously offered to Haukyn. Will’s eager response, “By cryst, I wolde 
pat I knewe hym... no creature leuere !” (XV, 189), is rewarded with the 
great visions of Piers and of Piers-Christ which are contained in Passus XVI- 
XVIII of the life of DoBet. Through these, the dreamer becomes so firmly 
established in love, that not even the assault of anti-Christ can make him 
abandon what he has set out to seek. In the beginning, he had thought that 
the answer lay in three neat little formulae, provided that someone could 
give him the right ones. Gradually, he learned that these formulae were 
really summed up in one person. For the sake of this person — Piers- 
Christ — he is prepared to persevere alone and to spend the rest of his 
life in pilgrimage. Here, where patient perseverance and love meet, is 
to be found that third and highest degree of patience which Professor Van- 
steenberghe has described. 

At the beginning of this paper, .I suggested that Christian patience 
attempts to model itself on the heroism of the early martyrs, expects to be 
perfected through perseverance in the midst of tribulations, and looks to- 
wards heaven as its ultimate goal.2° This triumph of patience is quietly 
expressed by the figure of Patience himself, with his twice-repeated affir- 
mation “Pacientes vincunt”. Langland, of course, can show no such final 
victory, for his concern is with man’s earthly pilgrimage, and therefore he 
must limit himself to the Christian experiences of this life. Yet even if no 
final certainty can he achieved here, Piers Plowman concludes with the 
assurance that all will be well in the end. The casual reader sees only the 
destruction of the Barn of Unity, a catastrophe which seems to be a denial 
of all that the previous visions had promised. However, when the whole 
poem is seen in perspective and understood in terms of a personal search, 
we realise that only the perseverance of the individual pilgrim, surmounting 
all surrounding assaults, ultimately matters. Despite his profound concern 
with it, Langland is not very hopeful about society as a whole. Like the 


20 As the Gloss comments on the Epistle of St. James I, 3: 4 (Glossa VI, 1265): “Patientia enim 
operatur probationem, quia cuius patientia per tribulationes non vincitur, perfectus probatur, 
quae sententia hic quoque dicitur: Patientia opus perfectum habet, & probatio operatur patien- 
tiam, quod est, tribulatio quea datur ad probationem fidei, facit per patientiam exerceri, per 
quod fides perfecta probatur.” This way of stating that patience leads to perfection is almost for- 
mulaic. The Ayenbite of Inwit, for example, follows precisely the same line of argument. Dan Mi- 
chel notes that no one is patient to begin with, but only acquires this virtue through tribulation. 
He concludes that without such trial, and subsequent development of patience, perfection is not 
possible. 

21 At the banquet scene, XIII, 171, and when instructing Haukyn, XIV, 52. 


332 E. M. ORSTEN 


prophets of old, he knows that Israel will forever seek to return to her idols, 
regardless of the mercies which the Lord continues to shower upon her. 
Nevertheless, for the individual soul, faithfulness is possible, and can be 
achieved even in the midst of apocalyptic disaster. 

Though in Passus XX all about him prove faithless, Conscience conquers 
despair, refuses to give up, and becomes all the more firmly fixed to his 
goal. His endurance stems from his great love for Piers-Christ and is the 
greatest victory patience can sustain in this world.22 Here, our neat dis- 
tinctions must be abandoned. For while theoretically we can discuss 
patientia as a virtue in its own right, in practice of course it-can not be sepa- 
rated from caritas. This holds true even on the natural level, as Prof. Van- 
steenberghe pounts out: 


La patience, au fond, est affaire d’amour; quand on aime un bien plus 
qu’un autre, on supporte avec patience la privation du second pour obtenir 
le premier.®? 


Applied to the supernatural plane, the choice leads to caritas : 


Pour que ’homme préfére 4 tous les biens de ce monde, dont la perte 
peut l’attrister, le bien de la grace, il faut qu’il ait la charité.% 


Langland suggests the same interrelationship between the two virtues when 
he shows us a tree planted in man’s heart and explains: 


Patience hatte be pure tre and pore symple of herte, 
And so, borw god and borw good men groweth be frute charite.% 


22 Though at this point I have turned from Will to Conscience, by the end of the poem the two 
are no longer completely distinct characters. Both share the same intense love for Piers-Christ, 
and both become pilgrims. Are we not, after all, ultimately talking about Will’s Conscience ? 

23 DTC, XI, 2248. 

24 DTC, XI, 2249. Innumerable Patristic writers make the same link between patientia and 
caritas. Ambrose, for instance, sums up the relationship between love, patience and perfection 
with the simple assertion that “Patientia vero perfectio est charitatis” (Expositio Evang. Sed. Luc., 
Lib. V, 1370; PL 15, 1652). Augustine talks about the common source of love and patience when 
he writes, “Proinde ab illo est patientia justorum, per quem diffunditur charitas eorum... Quanto 
ergo major est in sanctis charitas Deo, tanto magis pro eo quod diligitur ... omnia tolerantur” 
(De Patientia, Cap. XVII; PL 40, 619). 

25 B XVI, 8-9. In the C-Text, which for many reasons I find inferior, this passage is conside- 
rably altered to read (C XIX, 9-14).: 

The tree hihte Trewe-loue... the trinite hit sette, 

Thorgh louely lokynge hit lyueth and launceth vp blossemes, 
The whiche blosmes burnes Benygne-speche callen, 

And ther-of cometh a good frut the which men callen Werkes 
Of holynesse, of hendynesse of help-hym-that neodeth, 

The whiche is callid Caritas Cristes owen fode. 


“PDATIENTIA” IN THE B-TEXT OF “PIERS PLOWMAN” 333 


Far more importantly, however, he embodies this theory in living characters. 
Hence we remember Langland’s emblematic tree with its varied fruit 
much less clearly than we recall Conscience, the faithful pilgrim, in whom 
all the patience of which love is capable, becomes personified. General 
knowledge, practical experience and personal insight are all welded to- 
gether to create this figure. But only the poet’s craft can account for our 
emotional response to Conscience’s final outcry (XX, 378-80): 

Bi cryste... I wil bicome a pilgryme 

And walken as wyde as al be [worlde] lasteth 

To seken Piers be plowman... 


Trent University, Ontario. 


Mediaevalia 


CAEDMON: A TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN POET 


DonaLp W. Fritz 


What strikes me as extraordinary about Bede’s story of the poet Caedmon and his 
craft is not its account of a miracle but its record of themost commonplace and tradi- 
tional concepts of mediaeval poetry. For any of these Bede could have easily found 
authority in Isidore’s Etymologiae, a volume we know he read and used.1 Therein 
were the theories on poetry which were copied and passed on through the Middle 
Ages by both Rabanus Maurus and Vincent of Beauvais. Or if any of the early 
Christian-Latin poets ever came to the attention of Bede, he would have found in 
their careers and poems striking parallels with the art and life of Caedmon. 

Whether Bede saw any connections between the Caedmon legend and the theories 
on poetry in Isidore’s Etymologiae or in the poetry of Christian-Latin poets, we can- 
not, of course, say. That they exist, however, is a fact and a very important one. 
For they demonstrate how commonplace and believable all aspects of the Caedmon 
legend would have been to anyone of the Middle Ages. Bede’s account is, finally 
and undoubtedly quite accidently, a remarkable piece of early descriptive literary 
criticism. 

Bede reports that when Caedmon was commanded by the voice to sing, he began 
“cantare in laudem Dei Conditoris uersus.”® What he sang is this: “‘ Nunc laudare debemus 
auctorem regni caelestis, potentiam Creatoris et consilium illius, facta Patris gloriae. Quomodo 
alle, cum sit aeternus Deus, omnium miraculorum auctor extitit, qui primo filiis hominum caelum 
pro culmine tecti, dehinc terram custos humani generis omnipotens creauit.”? That Caedmon’s 
first poem should be a hymn of praise is not at all surprising. It places him immediate- 
ly within the tradition of Christian-Latin poets beginning with Commodian in the 
third century. As F. J. E. Raby more than adequately demonstrates, the Christian 
poets turned again and again in hymns of verse to praise God and His creation‘. 
One instance is that of Prudentius, who, looking back over his life and realizing the 
vanity of most things, decides that before he dies he will praise God at least in song, 
if he cannot please Him by virtuous deeds: “Hymnis continuet dies | nec nox ulla uacet 
quin dominum canat.”* In singing the praise of the beauty of the creation and the 


1 See J. W. H. Atkins, English Literary Criticism: The Medieval Phase (Cambridge, 1943), 46-47, 
for Bede’s debt to Isidore’s Etymologiae. 

2 Histori am Ecclesiasticam Gentis Anglorum, Historiam Abbatum, Epistolam ad Ecgberctum, una cum 
Historia Abbatum Auctore Anonymo, ed. Carolus Plummer, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1896), I, 259. 

3 Ibi d., 259-260. 

4 A History of Christian-Latin Poetry From the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. 
(Oxfor d, 1953). 


5 Carmina, ed. Mavricii P. Cunningham, Corpus Christianorum [Series Latina], 126 (Turnhout, 
1966), 2. 


CAEDMON : A TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN POET 335 


power of God, Caedmon, Prudentius, and all the other Christian poets were no 
different from the very first poets, if we are to believe Isidore’s citation from Tran- 
quillus. For they too, when they first emerged from a savage ageand began to worship 
their gods, brought forth “‘ita eloquio etiam quast augustiore honorandos putaverunt, lau- 
desque eorum et verbis inlustrioribus et iucundioribus numeris extulerunt.”® 

The essence of Bede’s story is, needless to say, the miracle. Caedmon learned his 
craft “non ab hominibus, neque per hominem institutus,... sed diuinitus adiutus gratis canendi 
donum accepit.”? As Curtius has observed: “The theory of the poet’s divine frenzy 
is, of course, set forth in Plato’s Phaedrus (which the Middle Ages did not know), but 
in diluted form it was to be found throughout late Antiquity and it passed to the Mid- 
dle Ages as a commonplace, like other elements of antique mythology.”® Divine 
inspiration was commonly associated throughout the medieval period not only with 
poets but also with artists in general. Much like the account of Caedmon’s experience 
is a ninth-century legend that Gregory the Great “received the chant from the Holy 
Ghost who in the form of a dove whispered the melodies into his ears.”® And Otto 
von Simson reports that “The Abbot Suger was convinced that the design of his 
church had been inspired by a celestial vision.”° Finally, Boccaccio, whose De 
genealogiis deorum gentilium became a standard handbook for poets and painters, was 
reasserting the doctrine of divine inspiration for the late Middle Ages. 

Isidore, on whom Boccaccio drew, gives support to the doctrine of divinely in- 
spired poetry. In his account of vates in “De poetis,” he says: “Vates a vi mentis appel- 
latos Varro auctor est; vel a viendis carminibus, id est flectendis, hoc est modulandis; et proinde 
poetae Latine vaies olim, scripta eorum vaticinia dicebantur, quod vi quadam et quasi vesania 
in scribendo commoverentur; vel quod modis verba conecterent, viere antiquis pro vincire ponenti- 
bus. Etiam per furorem divini eodem erant nomine, quia et ipsi quoque pleraque versibus effere- 
bant.”"= Jt is worth recalling a fact already pointed out by Curtius: “Isidore — or 
rather his source — derives carmen from carere mente (I, 39, 4).”18 Elsewhere in the 
Etymologiae Isidore sets forth the significance of the vates: “Vates a vi mentis appellatos, 
cuius significatio multiplex est. Nam modo sacerdotem, modo prophetam significat, modo poetam.”™* 
In a sense, Caedmon is a priest as well as a poet, if not also a prophet. Certainly 
it would not be entirely inappropriate to refer to him as a vates. 

The subjects of his poems certainly reflect his kinship with both priest and prophet, 
but then they were the very traditional subjects of all the Christian-Latin poets. 
He wrote, as Bede says, about the creation of the world, the origin of the race of man- 
kind, the history of Genesis, the exodus from Egypt, the incarnation of God, the pas- 


& Etymologiarum sive orginum, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1911), VIII, vii, 2. 

7 Bede, 259. 

8 Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans, Willard R, Trask 
(New York and Evanston, 1953), 474. 

9 Manfred F. Bukofzer, “Speculative Thinking in Medieval Music,” Speculum, 17 (1942), 169. 

10 The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order (New York, 
1956), xvii. 

Ἢ Ὁ. W. Robertson, Jr., A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton and Lon- 
don, 1963), 63. 

2 Tsidoie, VIII, vii, 3. 

18 Curtius, 474. 

14 Tsidore, VII, xii, 15. 


336 D. W. FRITZ 


sion and the resurrection, the advent of the Holy Ghost, and the doctrine of the 
Apostles. The list of subjects is a long one, and I am inclined to suspect that it is 
not necessarily a particularly accurate list of the poet’s works, but rather a list of 
possible topics any Christian poet might have seen as fit topics for verse. These are 
at any rate the topics one finds appearing again and again in the poetry of Commodian 
and all subsequent medieval Christian poets. They are the topics common to the 
poet-theologians, the category of poets to which we ought to assign Caedmon, Com- 
modian, Paulinus, Ambrose, and Prudentius and an endless number of others, for 
as Isidore observes: “Quidam autem poetae Theologici dicti sunt, quoniam de diis carmina 
Saciebant.” 

As a poet-theologian Commodian wrote Carmen Apologeticum (c. 250 A. D.), “the 
earliest example of Latin verse which was intended for and, we must assume, ap- 
preciated by uncultured members of the Church.”!* The aim of the poem was to 
instruct, and it set out to do so by “a kind of exposition of Christian doctrine, describ- 
ing the creation, God’s revelation of Himself to man, the coming of Antichrist, and 
the end of the world.”!” We see immediately that Commodian was drawing on topics 
similar to those Caedmon used. We do not know what Commodian’s verse was able 
to achieve among the “uncultured members of the Church.” But we might fairly 
assume, I think, that Caedmon’s aim was very similar to Commodian’s and that 
perhaps the poems of both had a like effect. The poetry of Caedmon, at least, had 
a profound influence, if Bede’s report is true: “Cuius carminibus multorum saepe animi ad 
contemtum saeculi, et appetitum sunt uitae caelestis accensi.”*® That in general was the aim 
of all religious art throughout the Middle Ages; the sermons, glass windows, images 
and carvings, bestiaries, hymns, all were meant to lead the mind to a contemplation 
of the spiritual world. 

There remains one aspect of the Caedmon story that may well be a part of an 
established tradition too. At least there is a striking parallel to it recorded by Isidore. 
We recall that Caedmon left the banquet hall when the cithara was passed to him 
for he could not sing. Here is Bede’s description of the event: “Siquidem in habitu 
Saeculart usque ad tempora prouectioris aetatis constitutus, nil carminum aliquando didicerat. 
Unde nonnumquam in conuiuio, cum esset laetitiae causa decretum, ut omnes per ordinem cantare 
deberent, ille, ubi adpropinguare sibi citharam cernebat, surgebat a media caena, et egressus ad 
suam domum repedabat.”!© The kernel of Caedmon’s dilemma and also its solution has 
a very interesting and striking parallel in Isidore’s discussion of the origins of music, 
an art discovered, he alleges, either by the Hebrew or by the Greeks. He draws a - 
very decisive constrast between sacred hymns sung in veneratione divina and secular 
songs customarily sung in conviviis when the cithara was passed around the banquet 
table to each man. This is what he records: “Moyses dicit repertorem musicae artis fuisse 
Tubal, qui fuit de stirpe Cain ante diluvium. Graeci vero Pythagoram dicunt huius artis in- 
venisse primordia ex malleorum sonitu et cordarum extensione percussa.... Post quos paulatim 
directa est praecipue haec disciplina et aucta multis modis, eratque tam turpe Musicam nescire 
quam litieras. Interponebature autem non modo sacris, sed et omnibus sollemnibus, omnibusque 


15 Ibid. VILL, vii, 9. 
16 Raby, 13. 

1 Tbid. 

18 Bede, 259. 

19 Ibid. 


CAEDMON : A TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN POET 337 


laetis vel tristioribus rebus. Vi enim in veneratione divina hymni, ita in nuptiis Hymenaei, et 
in funeribus threni, et lamenta ad tibias canebantur. In conviviis vero lyra vel cithara circum~ 
Serebatur, et accubantibus singulis ordinabatur conviviale genus canticorum.”®° Caedmon never 
served the secular Muses; indeed he turned his back on the conviviality and singing 
of the banquet hall and sought refuge in his stable quarters. There he was called into 
the service of God to compose songs in veneratione divina. 

In turning away from the scene of the secular music and devoting himself to the 
art of sacred songs, Caedmon is like Paulinus of Nola, who was born at Bordeaux 
in 353 A. D. Before his conversion to Christianity, Paulinus amused himself in the 
service of pagan gods. But afterwards, he writes in a song, “negant Camenis nec patent 
Apollini | dicata Christo pectora.”®! Now, he continues, his heart is fixed on the invi- 
sible and eternal things, not the visible and temporal: 


namque caduca patent nostris, aeterna negantur 
uisibus, et nunc spe sequimur quod mente uidemus, 
Spernentes uarias, rerum spectacula, formas 

et male corporeos bona sollicitantia uisus.?* 


His whole career as a poet is summarized in these words by Raby: “But for his con- 
version, he would have employed his poetical gifts upon trifling subjects and rhetori- 
cal themes; now that he had devoted himself to religion, he used his talent to express 
those ideas and emotions which had really mastered his life. In short, he became a 
true poet.” Caedmon, according to Bede, never employed his poetical gifts on 
trifling subjects and rhetorical themes. But through his miraculuous gift he did be- 
come a true poet, and until his death his heart was always fixed on things which are 
invisible and eternal. 

Bede’s account of Caedmon is charming and tender. But more important, this 
engaging legend is also a brief bit of medieval literary criticism. For it embodies 
some of the essential and traditional views of the poet and his craft which were held 
throughout the Middle Ages. Caedmon is in a sense an exemplum of the true Chris- 
tian poet who celebrates the praises of God in verse, draws on Scripture and Church 
dogma for his themes, is divinely inspired by God, keeps his heart fixed on things 
invisible and eternal, and aims constantly to lift the minds of his readers to those 
spiritual objects also. 


Miami University, Ohio. 


20 Isidore, ILI, xvi, 1-3. 

21 Carmina, ed. Gvilelmvs de Hartel, CSEL, 30 (Prague, Vienna, Leipzig, 1894), 25. 
22 Ibid., 32. 

23 Raby, 104. 


THE OINTMENT IN CHRETIEN’S YVAIN 


Roserr G. Coox 


One of the most inexplicable scenes in what remains, even in the 1960’s, a largely 
unexplained romance is the scene in Chrétien’s Yvain where two damsels and their 
lady discover the naked and witless hero asleep in a forest.) When one of the damsels 
identifies the naked Yvain by a scar on his face and reminds the lady of their need 
for a bold knight to defend them against the Count Aliers, the lady (later identified 
as the Dame de Noroison) recalls that she has at home an ointment given her by 
Morgan, who claimed for it that “there is no madness which it will not remove.”? 
The three women return to their castle, where the lady takes the box of ointment out 
of a coffer and gives it to one of the damsels, telling her to be sparing in its use: she 
is to apply it only to Yvain’s temples and then to bring back the unused portion. The 
Dame de Noroison makes it abundantly clear that to apply the ointment anywhere 
on the body other than the temples would be needless waste (11.2969-73). The damsel 
then returns alone to the sleeping Yvain, carrying the ointment and clothes. Dis- 
obeying her mistress’ orders, she applies the ointment to Yvain’s entire body, using 
up the whole box. She discreetly retires while Yvain wakes up, recovers his sanity, 
and puts on the clothes which she left for him. Then she joins him and persuades him 
to return to her lady’s castle for recuperation. As they cross a bridge over a swift- 
running stream, the damsel deliberately drops the empty box into the water. When 
her lady later asks her for the unused ointment, the damsel tells a prepared lie: that 
her horse slipped on the bridge, causing the box to fall into the water. The lady is 
upset at the loss of her most valuable possession, but consoles herself with the inevita- 
bility of the loss and the reflection that things don’t always turn out as desired. None- 
theless she asks the damsel to give Yvain every service. 

The romance goes on to tell of Yvain’s recovery and his victory over Count Aliers, 
and recounts for nearly four thousand lines a series of episodes culminating in his 
re-union with Laudine; but nothing more is said of the ointment or the damsel who 
applied it too liberally and lied to her lady. Certainly a magic ointment is a conve- 
nient and typical means of curing the hero, but why the additional story of the damsel 
and her method of using the ointment ? In this we have what is probably the most 
inconsequential detail in the whole romance, and unless we are content to take it 
as an indication of Chrétien’s love of story for its own sake, we should attempt to 
explain its presence. 

Surprisingly little effort has been made in this direction. Foerster suggests that 
Chrétien got the idea for the magic ointment from the ointment given to Jason by 
Medea in the Roman de Troie, but this source would account at most for the ointment 
itself, not for the remarkable method of its use or the fact that it is used to restore 


1 Lines 2888-3130. I have used the text of Wendelin Foerster, reproduced photographically 
in T. B. W. Reid’s French Classics edition (Manchester, 1942). 
2 “nul rage/N’est an teste, que il n’an ost” (2954-55). 


THE OINTMENT IN CHRETIEN’S « YVAIN » 339 


sanity. R. 5. Loomis devoted very little space to this passage in his large book on 
Chrétien, and directed his attention not toward the ointment but toward Morgan 
and her ultimate identification with the Dame de Noroison.4 Since Morgan is not 
mentioned again in the course of the romance, I suggest that her introduction in this 
episode is a casual conventionality — something like, but even less meaningful 
than the ascription of the Green Knight’s mission to Morgan in Sir Gawain and the 
Green Knight® (with the difference that in the English poem Morgan does make a 
personal appearance, in a minor role). The Gawain-poet makes use of Morgan’s 
traditional hostility to Arthur; Chrétien in the Yvain draws upon another tradition, 
that of her healing abilities — in her first appearance in literature, in the Vita Merlini, 
Morgan heals Arthur’s wounds in Avalon.*® 

No one has seen fit to deal with what clearly are the salient features of this episode: 
(1) the use of an ointment over the whole body rather than just on the temples, 
and (2) the lie by which the damsel accounts for her failure to bring back the box. 
Of these, the more striking is the first, for a servant who gets the better of her mistress 
(or his master) by deceit is a common literary figure — one has already appeared 
in Yvain (i. e. Lunete).? The motif of the excessive application of the ointment, on 
the other hand, is a rare one; a survey of the major motif-indexes fails to reveal any 
parallels. Though it is not essential to my thesis, I would venture a guess that, be- 
cause it is the more exceptional and because it comes first in a work whose genre 
bears marks of sequential composition, the discrepancy between the intended and 
theactual use of the ointment came first in Chrétien’s mind, and that secondarily he 
hit upon the deceitful damsel as an appropriate way of fitting this into his story. 

It is this motif of the application of the ointment, then, that calls for our attention. 


3 ΟἹ Reid’s note to 11. 2952 ff., “The magic ointment was perhaps suggested by the ointment 
given to Jason by Medea (Roman de Troie 1671 ff.),” which derives from Foerster’s straightforward 
announcement that “Die Wundersalbe (2592) stammt auch aus Troja 1652” (Kristian von Troyes, 
Yvain, Textausgabe, 4. Auflage [Halle. 1912], p. xlviii). 

4 Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes (New York, 1949), 309-11. 

5 Ed. by J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon (Oxford, 1925), 11. 2446 ff. 

® See Lucy Allen Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance (New York, repr. 
1960), 13, 25 ff. 

7 Chrétien seems to have a pronounced habit of doubling or repeating in Yuain. Besides the two 
deceitful mistresses just indicated, one might notice the following: (1) both Lunete and the disin- 
herited younger sister have a period of forty days in which to find a champion; (2) Yvain twice 
performs an adventure (the slaying of Harpin de la Montagne and the Chastel dela Pesme Avan- 
ture) which presents itself after he has committed himself to another adventure, yet before he has 
been able to carry out that original adventure (in turn, the defense of Lunete and the defense of the 
younger sister) ; (3) Yvain is twice offered marriage (to the Dame de Noroison and to the daughter 
at the Chastel de la Pesme Avanture) and of course twice refuses; (4) Yvain fights twice with fel- 
low members of Arthur’s court (Kay and Gawain) and in both cases he is unrecognized by his 
opponent (in the fight with Gawain, both knights are incognito). 

8 In Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature, rev. ed., 6 vols. (Bloomington, 1955-58) 
and Tom Peete Cross, Motif-Index of Early Irish Literature (Bloomington, 1952), item D1244 has to 
do with magic salve or ointment, but none of the references provides a counterpart to the situation 
in Yvain. Ὁ. P. Rotunda, Motif-Index of the Italian Novella in Prose (Bloomington, 1942), has no 
item D1244. Gerald Bordman, Motif-Index of the English Metrical Romances (Helsinki, 1963), adds 
a new item, D1508.5 (Magic ointment cures madness), but the single reference is to Ywain and 
Gawain, a romance based on Chrétien’s Yovain. 


340 R. G. COOK 


In the rest of this note I wish to suggest a possible source for this ointment which was 
to be applied to the temples only, but instead is applied liberally to the whole body. 
In doing so, I am turning to an area not generally regarded as likely source material 
for romance motifs: Scriptural commentary in the form of sermons. In particular, 
I will point to several places in St. Bernard’s sermons on Canticles where Chrétien 
might have got the suggestion. I repeat that I am not claiming to point to Chré- 
tien’s precise source; it is enough, since the celtisants have left the door wide open, 
to establish the likelihood that a romance writer could draw on this other kind of 
material. The a priori possibility is strong: Chrétien was a learned Christian (if the 
redundancy be permitted), not much separated from St. Bernard in time (the monk 
died in 1153), nor from Clairvaux in space (Troyes is 30 miles distant). Count Henry 
the Liberal of Champagne, Chrétien’s patron, had the sermons of Bernard in his 
library at Troyes.® 

My first passage is from Bernard’s twelfth sermon on Canticles, where he is com- 


menting on “Thy name is as oil poured out” (Cant. 1, 2). I cite his comments in 
full: 


Let us turn to the Gospels and examine something there which is perhaps relevant to 
these ointments. “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought 
sweet spices, that coming, they might anoint Jesus” [Mark 16, 1]. What were these oint- 
ments that were so precious that they were bought and collected for the body of Christ, 
that were plentiful enough for the whole body? Neither of the two predecing ointments 
was bought or made especially for the service of the Lord; nor does it say that they were 
poured over the whole body. But suddenly a woman is brought in, who in one place [Luke 
7, 38] kisses his feet and anoints them with ointment, and in another place [Matt. 26, 7; 
Mark 14, 3] either she or another woman brings an alabaster box of ointment and pours it 
on his head. But in this place [Mark 16, 1] it says “They bought sweet spices, that coming, 
they might anoint Jesus.” They did not buy ointments, but sweet spices; the ointment for 
the service of the Lord is not prepared beforehand, it is freshly blended; nor is it for the 
anointing of only one part of His body, such as the head or the feet, but, as it is written: 
“That coming, they might anoint Jesus,” which is to say His whole body, not just part. 

Now you, if you put on mercy and show yourself generous and kind not only to parents 
and relatives and those who have aided you or you hope will aid you — for even the heathen 
do this — but if, following the counsel of Paul, you strive to do good to all men, so that you 
do not consider that humane deeds ought to be denied even to an enemy, it is certain that 
you possess abundantly the finest ointments and that you have undertaken to anoint, not 
just the head or the feet of the Lord, but, as much as you are able, the whole body, which is 
the Church.1° 


9. Cf. Urban T. Holmes, Jr., and Sister M. Amelia Klenke, Chrétien, Troyes, and the Grail (Cha- 
pel Hill, 1959), 16. 

10 “Sed recurramus ad Evangelium, atque aliquid quod forte spectet et ad haec unguenta re- 
quiramus. MARIA MAGDALENE, ET MARIA IACOBI, ET SALOME EMERUNT ARO- 
MATA, UT VENIENTES UNGERENT IESUM. Quaenam ista unguenta tam pretiosa ut 
Christi corpori parentur et comparentur, tam copiosa ut toti sufficiant ἢ Neutrum quippe duorum 
praecedentium aut emptum aut factum specialiter ad opus Domini, aut toto in corpore legitur 
fuisse diffusum. Sed de subito introducitur mulier, uno quidem in loco osculans pedes et unguento 
ungens, in altero vero vel ipsa, vel altera, habens alabastrum unguenti et illud mittens in caput. 
Ceterum nunc: EMERUNT, ait, AROMATA, UT VENIENTES UNGERENT TESUM. 
Emunt non unguenta, sed aromata; et unctio in obsequium Domini non facta assumitur, sed nova 


THE OINTMENT IN CHRETIEN’S « YVAIN » 441 


The very absence of Christ’s body when the two Marys came to anoint it, Bernard 
goes on, teaches us that the ointment should be used for his living body, i. e. the 
Church. Spiritually then, the ointment signifies acts of pity (pietas): “In this, there- 
fore, the master of pity saved the finest ointments of pity, which he wished to be used 
entirely for his needy members, for both their physical and their spiritual needs.”* 

Later in the same sermon, after an excursus on the waste which is necessarily in- 
volved in the service of the Lord, Bernard returns to his association of the ointment 
of Mark 16, 1 with pity. In doing so, he reiterates a threefold association that he had 
made in the tenth sermon, namely, of the ointment used on Christ’s feet with contri- 
tion, that used on His head with devotion, and that intended for His whole body 
with pity. Concerning the last he says: 


The unction of pity, which comes from a concern for those who are wretched and is 
poured over the entire body of Christ, is superior to both of the other ointments. I mean by 
His body not that which was crucified, but that which was acquired by His passion.1? 


In his fourteenth sermon on Canticles, Bernard again develops the same contrast, 
this time with reference to Psalm 132 which compares unity among men to the 
“precious ointment on the head that ran down upon the beard, the beard of Aaron, 
which ran down to the skirt of his garment....” 


conficitur; nec ad ungendam tantum aliquam corporis partem, verbi gratia pedes aut caput, sed, 
sicut scriptum est: UT VENIENTES UNGERENT IESUM, quod est totius corporis complexio, 
non partis distinctio. 
“Tu quoque si te induas viscera misericordiae, liberalem benignumque exhibeas non tantum 
parentibus sive cognatis tuis, aut quos tibi vel benefactores tenes vel benefacturos speras, — nam 
et ethnici hoc faciunt —, sed, iuxta Pauli consilium, studeas operari bonum ad omnes, ita ut prop- 
ter Deum nec inimico officium hamanitatis corporale seu spirituale negandum subtrahendumve 
existimes, constat te quoque abundare unguentis optimis, ne caput aut pedes Domini tantum, sed 
passim, quantum in te est, ungere suscepisse totum corpus, quod est Ecclesia.” Sancti Bernardi, 
Opera, Vol. I: Sermones super Cantica Canticorum 1-35, ed. by J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. 
Rochais (Rome, 1957),64. That Chrétien had the ointment of Mark 16, 1 in mind when writing 
the episode of Yvain’s cure by a magic ointment appears more likely when we observe that in 
his Lancelot he designates a similar ointment as “l’oignemant as trois Maries” (line 3374 in the 
edition of Wendelin Foerster: Christian von Troyes, Samiliche erhaltene Werke, vol. 4 [Halle, 1899]). 
The three Marys, as Foerster’s note tells us, must refer to the Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother 
of Jesus, and (Mary) Salome of Mark 16, 1. The three Marys’ ointment is again mentioned in 
La Mort Aymeri de Narbonne, ed. J. Couraye du Parc, S.A. T. F. (Paris, 1884), 11. 1993-2001. See 
also Jean Frappier’s note on page 220 of his modern French translation of Le Chevalier de la Charrette 
(Paris, 1962): “D’aprés une croyance populaire attestée diversement dans des textes médiévaux 
assez nombreux, entre autres la Mort Aimeri de Narbonne, Fierabras, La Continuation de Perceval par 
Gerbert de Montreuil, les aromates achetés par ‘les trois Maries’, Marie-Madeleine, Marie, mére 
de Jacques le Mineur, et Marie Salomé, pour embaumer le corps de Jésus (Evangile selon saint 
Marc, 16, 1) auraient fait partie des reliques de la Passion et consititué un reméde miraculeux.” 
This may also account for the fact that there are three women — the Dame de Noroison and her 
two damsels — who discover the sleeping Yvain. 

11. “In isto ergo pepercit Magister pietatis unguentis optimis pietatis, quae membris suis 
indigentibus tam corporaliter quam spiritualiter omnino cuperet exhiberi.” Ibid., 65. 

22 “Porro utrumque vincit unctio pietatis, quae de respectu miserorum fit, et per universum 
Christi corpus diffunditur. Corpus dico, non illud crucifixum, sed quod illius acquisitum est pas- 
sione.” Ibid., 67. 


342 R. 6. COOK 


For what reason should the unction of salvation be restricted to the beard of Aaron, as 
the ungenerous Jew [Moses, who anoints Aaron in Lev. 8, 12 and Ecclus. 45, 18] wishes ? 
It is not for the beard, but for the head. The head moreover is not for the sake of the beard 
alone, but the whole body, Let it [the head] receive first, but not alone. Let that which it 
has received from above be poured out on the lower members. Let the celestial liquor descend, 
descend on the breasts of the Church.... Let it overflow even more, I ask, and reach the 
edge of the garment, namely me — certainly the last and unworthiest of all, yet belonging 
to the garment [of the Church].1% 


Both these sermons, then, make the distinction between ointment placed on the 
head and ointment spread over the whole body which we found to be such a striking 
narrative detail in Yvain. In addition, these passages have a spiritual significance 
which is directly relevant to Chrétien’s romance, for is not Yvain at the moment he 
receives the ointment a totally wretched and reduced member of the Church who 
benefits from an act of pity of the precise kind that Bernard is preaching ? It is at 
least tempting to picture the poet recalling Bernard’s association of certain Biblical 
ointments with acts of pity and, by means of his storyteller’s art, expanding the 
monk’s static distinction into a curiously lively episode exactly at the point in his 
narrative where his hero is helplessly dependent on outside aid. 

In his thirty-second sermon on Canticles, Bernard again treats the significance of 
ointments. Here, to be sure, he does not make the distinction between areas of 
application which has concerned us in this note; but he does talk of the healing power 
of ointments in a way which parallels the total sens of Yvain. Bernard talks of souls 
which are not yet ready to receive Christ in the form of a bridegroom, but are first 
in need of a physician. 


For he who is not yet so disposed [to be a bride of the Lord], but rather is full of sorrow 
because of the memory of his sins, speaking in the bitterness of his soul says to God, “Do not 
condemn me” [Job, 10, 2]. Or perhaps he is still dangerously tempted, seduced and snared 
by his own concupiscence. Such a soul needs a physician, not a bridegroom, and therefore 
receives not kisses and embraces but remedies for his wounds: oil and ointments.!4 


Bernard goes on to cite Psalm 146, 3, calling this ointment the medicine given by Je- 
sus to those of contrite heart. In Chrétien’s poem, Yvain is at this point contrite, both 
literally and spiritually, and he will soon begin a long series of adventures which are 
clearly a kind of penance for his crime against Laudine. In Bernard’s terms, Yvain 
is “full of sorrow because of the memory of his sins.” And the progress of the romance 
is such that at the end, no longer in need of a physician, Yvain re-enters the marriage 
state — that state which for Bernard figured the highest beatitude of the soul. 


Tulane University. 


18 “Quo pacto, ut vult Iudaeus ingratus, tota in barba Aaron remaneat unctio salutaris ? Non 
barbae, sed capitis est. Caput autem non barbae solius, sed et totius est corporis. Capiat sane 
prima, non sola. Refundat et inferioribus membris quod accepit ipsa desuper. Descendat, descendat 
et in ubera Ecclesiae supernus liquor.... Sed exuberet, quaeso, adhuc, et perveniat usque in oram 
vestimenti, in me utique omnium novissimo atque indignissimo, de vestimento tamen.” Ibid.,77. 

14 “Qui enim nondum invenitur ita affectus, sed compunctus magis actuum recordiatione suv- - 
rum, loquens in amaritudine animae suae dicit Deo: NOLI ME CONDEMNARE, aut forte 
etiam adhuc periculose tentatur a propria concupiscentia abstractus et illectus, hic talis non spon- 
sum requirit, sed medicum; ac per hoc non oscula quidem vel amplexus, sed tantum remedia 
vulneribus accipiet suis, in oleo utique et unguentis.” Jbid., 227-8. 


THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER IN SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT 


EDWARD TROSTLE JONES 


Although it has been years since J. 5. P. Tatlock assured us the Middle Ages 
could and did laugh,! interpreters of medieval literature frequently seem unusually 
dour even in the presence of texts and situations of humorous intent. An example of 
the reluctance of critics to explore medieval comic possibilities is the relative neglect 
of the laughter which greets the returning Gawain to Camelot in Sir Gawain and the 
Green Knight. That the Arthurian court, upon learning of Gawain’s experience and 
shame, “lazen loude ber-at”? would appear to represent a slightly unexpected turn in 
the narrative. Yet the two most important critical approaches to the poem, broadly 
labelled the mythological and allegorical,* have been strangely mute on the signi- 
ficance of the concluding levity. If laughter, however, traditionally reduces and 
comedy is often enough skeptical of not only myths but also, on occasion, divinities, 
then proponents of the grave import of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight may be well 
advised not to acknowledge too specifically the laughter in the poem. 

In the present examination of this crux from Gawain, I propose to look to the end 
of the poem to suggest that finally its spirit, if not satirical, is closer to what a later 
age might term a comedy of manners than Christian allegory. The objective of the 
essay is seminal rather than final, even speculative. It is offered as an alternative to 
an interpretation like Charles Moorman’s “Myth and Medieval Literature: Sir 
Gawain and the Green Knight”* which finds the laughter indicative of spiritual error 
and incipient tragedy for the court. My view is nearer to Larry D. Benson’s account 
in Art and Tradition in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”® which explains the laughter 
as a modification of the high chivalric ideal and the fame of the Round Table achieved 
through the court’s recognition of human limitation. 

Comedy is based on the social at the expense of the individual, as Henri Bergson 
among others has pointed out.* So it is with the courtiers’ laughter at the end of Ga- 
wain. The laughter does not brutally detract from the excellence of Gawain, as man 
or knight; but it limits his claim to exclusiveness, or worse his potential for priggish- 
ness, the like of which is suggested by Alan M. Markman’s assertion that “the pri- 
mary purpose of this poem is to show what a splendid man Gawain is.”? 


1 “Mediaeval Laughter,” Speculum, 21 (1946), 289-294. 

2 Line 2514 in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Sir Israel Gollancz, with introductory essays. 
by M. Day and M. S. Serjeantson, Early English Text Society, OS, No. 210 (London, 1940), 94. 

3 See the comprehensive survey of research of and prolegomenon to Gawain in Morton W. Bloom- 
field, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” PMLA, 76 (1961), 7-19. 

4 “Myth and Mediaeval Literature: Sir Gawainand the Green Knight”, Mediaeval Studies, 18 (1956), 
158-172. 

5 “The Return to Camelot” in Art and Tradition in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (New Bruns- 
wick, N. J., 1965), 240-248. 

6 “The Comic in General,” see Chapter I, Laughter, in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher (Garden City, 
N. Y., 1956), 62-103. 

7 “The Meaning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” PMLA, 72 (1957), 574-586. See also Hans 
Schnyder, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: An Essay in Interpretation,” The Cooper Monographs, 


344 Ἑ. T. JONES 


Doubtless at work in most laughter is a process of reductio, extending to what Berg- 
son has termed “a species of degradation.”® But the degree of “degradation” can 
vary according to the quality of the laughter. The jesting laughter the Green Knight 
hurls at Arthur’s court and manifests throughout the poem, for example, seems to 
be more consistently “a species of degradation” than the courtiers’ more humane 
laughter at the end. But their laughter likewise is informed by a little mockery at 
the expense of the perfect knight who is funny because he acts as if his position were 
completely serious and plays his role accordingly. Gawain’s failure to laugh with 
his fellow courtiers separates him from them and ironically makes him funnier by 
situation. Louis Kronenberger provides some insight into such an effect: “Comedy 
is always jarring us with the evidence that we are no better than other people, and 
always comforting us with the knowledge that most other people are no better than 
we are. It makes us more critical but it leaves us more tolerant; and to that extent 
it performs a very notable social function.”® Admittedly Kronenberger is writing 
about the comedy of manners, yet in spite of the anachronism his quotation may 
help to explain the source and qualtiy of medieval laughter in Gawain as a timeless 
response to incongruity. 

The laughter at Arthur’s court need not betoken a sudden sense of superiority on 
the part of the courtiers, as it does earlier for Bercilak, but this response may indica- 
te a measure of sophistication among them which hitherto has been concealed. If 
the meaning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is engendered, as many scholars assu- 
me, in Gawain’s mythical journey from innocence to experience, then the role of 
the courtiers and their laughter can be assessed in terms of Gawain’s “coming of 
age.” What to Gawain denotes the mark of his shame, the green baldric, becomes 
immediately adopted for everyone’s fashion. Gawain is not alone in having sustai- 
ned a rite de passage: each courtier, by wearing the baldric, holds himself as humo- 
rously accountable for error as Gawain seriously judges himself. The courtiers’ 
laughter resounds with both a sophisticated detachment and a charitable identifi- 
cation of which the laughter and the baldric are respectively emblematic. Everyone 
present has come through his own rite de passage, joyously now except for Gawain, 
but surely not unscathed. Arthur’s community is more than ever intact at Camelot. 

Without the assertion of the court through laughter, the poem might be weighted 
towards the tragedy of Gawain’s loss of his own ideal and the decadence of the court 
that it adumbrates. Whereas, in truth, the effect of a happy-ending complete with 
laughter assures the process of comedy. Gawain follows the logic of the comic pattern 
as set forth by Suzanne Langer: “In comedy, therefore, there is a general triviali- 
zation of the human battle. Its dangers are not real disasters, but embarrassment and 
the loss of face. That is why comedy is ‘light’ compared to tragedy, which exhibits 
an exactly opposite tendency to general exaggeration of issues and personalities.” 


ed. H. Liideke (Bern, 1961). Schnyder’s provocative examination of the poem as criticism of 
Arthur and his court does not mention the laughter that greets Gawain. 

8 “The Comic Element in Words,” Laughter, 141. 

9 The Thread of Laughter: Chapters on English Stage Comedy from Fonson to Maugham (New York, 
1952), 6. 

10 Chapter 18, “The Great Dramatic Forms: The Comic Rhythm,” Feeling and Form (New York, 
1953), 349. Along the same lines see also George Kane, Middle English Literature: A Critical Study 
of the Romances, the Religious Lyrics, Piers Plowman (London, 1951). Kane disparages the seriousness 
of Gawain’s quest: “Gawain is a brave knightand a true one, but his stature in the romance that 
belongs to him is less than that in the larger work [Alliterative Morte Arthur] where he must share 


THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER IN ( SIR GAWAIN » 345 


The courtiers function to keep the predicament of Gawain in comic perspective; 
in their laughter and finally sympathy can be found the rhythm of “felt life” which 
Mrs. Langer identifies as the substance of comedy. The return to the matter-of-fact 
world of laughter gives reality even to romance. 

The moral significance of Gawain’s lesson on traw pe endures amid the laughter ; 
nevertheless, critics who stress the moral import at the total neglect of the contrasting 
mood fail to do justice to the transforming power of levity. It should be remembered 
that Gawain himself first impaired his knightly dignity by sacrificing loyalty and 
honor to preserve his own life. Still, as the laughter of the courtiers implies, the ideal 
of knightly perfection is probably unattainable, and the Round Table restores Ga- 
wain’s dignity by welcoming him back to the more typical and manageable world 
of human limitation. The court is pleased Gawain took up the challenge, came 
through as well as he did, and now he is greeted with good humor, tinged ever so 
slightly with mockery, directed both at him and themselves. 

Readers of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight must be aware that they apprehend most 
details of the narrative from what is essentially Gawain’s point of view. At the end 
of the poem, however, there is a marked shift, for the courtiers provide a new kind 
of objectivity. The effect is less a reversal in point of view than an expansion, bringing 
the reader the gregarious as well as the single eye. This double focus contributes ex- 
actly the right note. “No society is in good health,” writes Wylie Sypher, “without 
laughing at itself quietly and privately; no character is sound without self-scrutiny, 
without turning inward to see where it may have overreached itself... This kind of 
awareness is an initiation into the civilized condition; it lightens the burden of self- 
ishness, cools the heat cf ego, makes us impressionable by others.” The loud res- 
ponse of the courtiers forcefully reminds us that all men fall short, and fortunate is 
he who does not fall down. Laughter saves Gawain from the dark corner of guilt, 
anxiety, and fear. That Gawain does not understand the benison he has received 
from his fellows should not interfere with the reader’s shock of recognition. 

The ambiguity of Gawain’s “perfection” is introduced by the courtiers’ laughter. 
On the other hand, such ambiguity helps to place the individual in a fresh relation- 
ship to society, as in the standard comedy of manners where the social norm proves 
more powerful than the individual standard of moral absolutes. If society seems to 
endorse duplicity as a mode of behavior, Gawain has been exposed throughout his 
adventures to discrepancies which provoke laughter and reflect the comic. In retro- 
spect Gawain may have the last laugh. My doctrine of comic “eschatology” is pre- 
dicated on the doubleness of vision generated by the courtiers’ laughter. ‘The comic 
perception “comes only when we take a double view — that is, a human view — of 
ourselves, a perspective of incongruity. Then we take part in the ancient rite that 
si a Debate and a Carnival, a Sacrifice and a Feast.” Whether or not the laughter of 
Gawain attains to the quality of a rite, it serves some thematic purpose by affirming a 
credible social response at the end. Whatever else this remarkably rich poem may be, 
it is finally a comedy, less than divine, but quintessentially human. 


University of Maryland. 


the room. His adventures with the Green Knight are essentially of no great moment, both because 
little more than his own life could hang upon the outcome and also because that outcome can 
never really be in doubt; even the simplest fourteenth-century listener must have known that 
Gawain could not actually lose his head in this affair.” (73-74). 

11 “The Meaning of Comedy,” appendix to Comedy, Op. cit., 252. 

12 Thid., 255. 


A PROVISIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ORESME’S WRITINGS 
A SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 


Apert Ὁ. MENuT 


To keep our “Provisional Bibliography of Oresme’s Writings” (cf. Medieval Studies 
28, 1966, 279-299) abreast of these prolifically productive times, we offer the following 
additions and emendations for the information of Oresmians everywhere. 

(1) P. 290, Section B, “Original Works in French,” Item 2; Hector Estrup, “Ores- 
me and Monetary Theory,” Scandinavian Economic History Review 14 (1966), 97-116. 
This excellent mise-au-point of recent studies seeks to reconcile major points still at 
issue concerning the important Traictié de la monnoie and the congeneric Latin De 
mutationibus monetarum. Of both these works a new critical edition is long overdue; 
almost alone of all Oresme’s writings, these two parallel works kept his name alive 
throughout the nineteenth century. 

(2) P. 283, Section A, “Mathematics,” Item 6, Quaestiones de sphaera. Professor 
Garrett Droppers of Alfred University, Alfred, N. Y., reports the discovery of a 
considerable fragment of the Quaestiones de sphaera in Venice, Marc. Lat. VIII, 74 
(Valentinelli, XI, 107), ff. 17-8". He has very kindly sent along corrections in the 
foliation of three other manuscripts containing the Quaestiones de sphaera listed in our 
tabulation ; well aware of the need for accuracy of foliation when ordering films from 
foreign sources especially, we are deeply grateful to Professor Droppers for his wel- 
come assistance in purging our unpremeditated errors, as follows: Florence, Riccar- 
diana, MS 117, should read ff. 125"-135t. Rome, Vatican Lat. 2185, should read 
ff. 71?-77". Seville, Bibl. Colombina, MS 7-7-13, should read ff. 93'-101¥. 

With regard to the Erfurt MS Amplon. Q. 299, ff. 113-126, Professor Droppers 
writes: “The manuscript refers in the incipit to a tractatus de spera; in the explicit, 
to a quaestiones de spera of Nicole Oresme. While working on my thesis, I looked at 
photographs of it. It is not the same work as the Quaestiones I have edited ; but whether 
or not it is really by Nicole Oresme is something that I have not yet investigated. 
Nor does it appear to be a Latin counterpart of Lillian McCarthy’s Traictié de Pespere.” 
We await Professor Dropper’s solution of this enigma and hope we may report his 
conclusions in some future Oresmiana. 

We are happy to be able to report here the appearance in print of three significant 
items in the series Publications in Medieval Science, sponsored by the University of 
Wisconsin Press. The first edition of Oresme’s De proportionibus proportionum together 
with his Ad pauca respicientes, with parallel English translations by Professor Edward 
Grant, became available in the fall of 1966. These are perhaps Oresme’s most ad- 
vanced works in the field of pure mathematics. Ad pauca respicientes deals with the 
kinetics of circular motion, especially with the motions of celestial bodies. It sprang 
from Oresme’s opposition to judicial astrology; it attempts to demonstrate the impos- 
sibility of astrological predictions in view of the probable incommensurability of the 
motions of heavenly bodies. 

Marshall Clagett’s edition (with English translation) of Oresme’s most original 
contribution to medieval science appeared early this year in the same series; the 
full-length descriptive title is: Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and 


BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ORESME’S WRITINGS 347 


Motions: a Treatise on the Uniformity and Difformity of Intensities, known as Tractatus de 
configurationibus qualitum et motuum. Dr. Clagett, general editor of the series, has pro- 
duced this 800-page first and definitive edition of the full text of this significant and 
influential work from his painstaking collation of the fourteen extant manuscripts. 

The third item to report is the publication (Spring, 1968) in the same series of our 
edition of Oresme’s Livre du ciel et du monde with parallel English translation. In this 
work, Oresme’s running commentary is of particular interest, affording as it does a 
clear and cogent synthesis of later medieval ideas in natural philosophy. 

After a relatively quiescent period of many years, the search for documentary and 
circumstantial evidence upon which to identify beyond reasonable doubt the author 
of the Songe du vergier was reactivated by the late distinguished French medievalist, 
Robert Bossuat. In his intensive examination of the problem in “Nicole Oresme et 
le Songe du vergier” in Le Moyen Age 53 (1947), 83-130, Bossuat produced an inter- 
pretation of the available documents slanted in favor of Oresme as the probable 
author; he adduced stylistic proofs skilfully presented but impermissable in evidence, 
for most of the Songe is a tissue of quoted passages from not only Oresme, but from 
several other contemporary writers, while the personality revealed behind the style 
is most like that which we sense in reading Philipe de Meéziéres’ Songe du vieil pélerin 
or his Sustance de la Chevalerie de la Passion, recently edited by the late Professor Abdel 
Hamid Hamdy, in the Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University Press, vol. 
17, 18, (1964-65), 105 pp. In 1896, Nicolas Iorga attributed the Songe du vergier pro- 
visionally to Philippe in his extensive and definitive work, P. de Méziéres, 1327-1405, 
et la Croisade au xiv® Siécle, and we incline to support Iorga’s conclusions — at least, 
for the present. We await the judgment of the foremost living authority on Philippe 
de Méziéres, Professor George W. Coopland, whose two-volume edition of Le Songe 
du vieil pélerin is now in press at the Cambridge University Press, after many years of 
close familiarity with Philippe’s life and works, Professor Coopland opines that, al- 
though Oresme and Philippe were closely associated as intimate friends in common 
with King Charles V of France, whom they both served at the same time, perhaps 
even under the same roof at the Hotel Saint-Pol, between 1373-1376, it was Philippe 
who wrote for Charles V the famous “disputaison entre un clerc et un chevalier,” 
very shortly after Nicole Oresme had completed his third and final public redaction 
of his commented translation of Aristotle’s Politics. Preferring this interpretation of 
events, we omitted any reference to the Songe du vergier in our recent “Provisional 
Bibliography.” In the Introduction to our critical edition of Oresme’s Livre de Poli- 
tiques, now ready for publication, we have explained at length our continuing support 
of Iorga’s provisional attribution to Philippe de Méziéres. 


Syracuse University. 


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